Saturday 19 July 2014

In praise of things.

In our current quest to Sort Out All The Things, we discovered a week or so ago that the reason the drain outside the kitchen was chronically overflowing was not a break in the pipe, or any kind of strange system whereby rocks were being pulled into the tubes, but a very hard to shift blockage.  We had some help in this realisation - the father-in-law of a friend who does general garden odd-jobbing had a look at it for us, and perservered past the point where several times in the past we thought it had been sorted.

Rods went up and down, the hose was shoved in from several directions, and maybe an hour and a half after it had first appeared to run clear, a semi-solid plug the diameter of the pipe edged its way out.  I would never have guessed that undissolved dishwasher tablets were the problem, but it seems that the powdery mass plugging the pipe was just that.  Huh.

So, you know where this is going, right?  Yep.  Today was dishwasher shopping day.  To be fair, the old one had lasted maybe 8 years, and it was some random non-brand machine which the kitchen company installed for us.  It had recently stopped washing well, and spares weren't going to be a straightforward purchase, so knowing it was causing this problem as well pushed us over the edge.

I never realised there would be such a range of decisions to be made though!  We needed a built-in model, which narrowed our selection to begin with, and we didn't want to spend in excess of £700 which took a couple of the flashier models out of the picture (though the one which projected little icons on the floor when it was washing was pretty cool) but I did want to find one with a cutlery tray rather than a big basket that takes up a wodge of space on the bottom rack . . . not slimline . . . not too concerned about running a half-load . . . auto-dirt-detector (really?  Who puts clean dishes in the dishwasher?) . . . fancy extra jets, foldable racks, adjustable-whilst-filled top basket, blue interior lights, silent-running nighttime mode, teacup shelves . . . you can imagine my spinning eyes, and the little tweeting birds circling my head.  But we managed a decision!  We've gone for a Maytag which isn't a company we were particularly aware of, but it's owned by Whirlpool, and whilst I quite liked the Whirlpool model next to it in the shop, the Maytag is virtually the same but with a cutlery tray.

So I'm just waiting for a phone call from the installation guy in Monday, and in a week or so I'll have my new machine.

Which is all great, but as with the new car and the roof repairs, more money is going out for things which won't bring me closer to getting my studio.  There are things in the pipeline though (no, not the blocked one) and I'm hoping to have better news in time for the next blog post.  Fingers crossed!

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