"I can't imagine why we'd need those screws."

The laundry room saga continues. On Monday, I discovered a small leak on the floor by the new washing machine (see previous post). Said washing machine was only at its ONE MONTH anniversary, so I was totally freaked out by this development. A call to Dracut appliance informed us that we're still completely under warranty, and we were quickly set up with a very nice repair guy for today. The leak was a bit of a fluke; we haven't been able to replicate it. Repair guy re-balanced the machine and we think all is well.

Meanwhile, while repair guy was in the laundry room, I turned off the dryer by opening the door. The load was done anyway, so I didn't think anything of it. A few minutes ago, I went downstairs to dry the latest load, and discovered that I had broken the dryer while the repair guy was here looking at the washer. The little latch in the door was broken, thus the dryer would not turn on because the door wouldn't stay closed. I called my in-house repair guy, also known as Jake. We unscrewed the door, and discovered that no, I did not break the latch -- someone else had broken it and repaired it with duct tape. So we did the same, and put the door back together again. Figuring we may well have to dis-assemble and re-assemble the door again at some point, Jake pushed the two pieces back together, and uttered the immortal line: "I can't imagine why we'd need those screws."

So they're sitting there on the window sill, while we wait to see if the dryer notices. So far, so good. Stay tuned.

Meet Our New Washing Machine

Last week, the washing machine (left by the previous owners, and probably about 15 years old) started leaking. This happened the morning after I had a dream in which our house started flooding. So now I'm psychic, which is pretty handy. Anyway, we've been searching for the right washer. We got this one at Dracut Appliance, a local business about 2 miles from here. They were very nice folks. Today they delivered and installed the washer, and right now, at this very minute, I am doing the first load of laundry. So far, so good. Fingers crossed.




Someday, we will get a plumber here to set up some supply lines and extend this drain pipe so that we can put the washer on this drain area. It looks like the previous owners started this project but didn't finish it. It's not high on the priority list at the moment, as projects go.

Plumbing Project #2

After our first bad experience with a plumbing project ("shower head melee" as I like to call it), you'd think we would have learned. A few days after we moved in, we discovered that the washing machine hoses were put on wrong -- the hot water input was cold and the cold was hot. This wasn't a huge deal, since we could just set the dial to the opposite of the water temperature we wanted, but it meant there was no cold water rinse (since the machine didn't have a setting for hot water rinse).

So we've been talking about doing this for a while. Today, I decided to LOOK at the washer and see what this might involve. I noticed that the connectors at the point of the washer were kinda old, so I put the slightest bit of pressure on them, just to see how they were connected....and a trickle of water appeared. ARGH!

Jake found the wrench and worked the connectors back into place. Then he went back to the other end of the hoses, where they hook up to the water, and switched them at that point. He is a bit wet after this, but thankfully, he caught most of the water with his shirt. And lo and behold, it works! No plumber needed (so far, fingers crossed) and I just completed a successful load with the new set-up.

Hooray for Jake!