Murder in the Kitchen

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The new unit in place

The new unit in place

Yep, it happened again.

We added to our appliance graveyard.

Our garbage disposal died.

Dead as a doornail. Toes up. Kicked the bucket.

Or more likely, was murdered. (queue sinister music here)

The murder weapon

The murder weapon

There was a large stone in it. It may have been there for a while because it was broken into smaller pieces that jammed into the grinding device.

We have no idea how it got there. The stone was too large to have come from anything we keep in the kitchen. It will be one of those mysteries of life.

We raced to our respective computers. I was on Amazon looking at reviews and the beloved husband was on the Home Depot site looking at their inventory.

Yes, we are going to replace it ourselves.

How hard could that be? (insert sinister laughing here)

I looked for phrases like “easy to install” and “quiet.” One review read, “I’m a 68-year-old woman and I did this myself in a half hour although it’s heavy to lift.” Hmmmm….

I’ve been to this rodeo before. I know it can produce a lot of bad words coming from under the sink. Sometimes there is blood spurting from wounds or black thumbnails.

(I really wanted to go somewhere….anywhere else.)

It’s a straight forward job if you could turn the sink upside down but you can’t. So you have to crawl upside down and shimmy into a small dark space to do it.

We bought the same model as the 68-year-old woman. She didn’t mention that she was an Amazon woman. Perhaps she was replacing the same brand and didn’t need to change the connections. I’m going with Amazon woman myself.

It didn’t take us a half hour. It took longer than that. In fact, so much longer that it’s embarrassing to say.

With the trip to purchase the new unit and of course the follow-up trip for something that you didn’t realize you needed, plus the installation and a cooling down period in the middle (for the human installer not the system), it took the better part of a day.

Amazon woman’s comment on lifting was not insignificant. It turns out that the unit is so heavy you can’t lift it with one hand (while you are lying on your back in the dark hole) and use the other to attach.

There was no room in there for another person with more hands! This was the point where the human installer got overheated.

After the cooling off period, a car jack was used and the rest was easy peasy.

We have replaced all the appliances except for the kitchen exhaust fan. I should start checking Amazon’s reviews for a replacement.

I am also happy to report that there was no plumber’s crack shown in the whole project!

 

 

55 thoughts on “Murder in the Kitchen”

  1. You are a bigger woman than I am. Or maybe a smaller one, so you can fit more comfortably under the sink. There are jobs I’ll do myself. There are jobs that I will hire folks to do (ALL PLUMBING). There are no jobs Iwill give to my husband, though. When he picks up a tool, catastrophe follows.

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  2. And no blood was spilled? Hey, that’s an accomplishment in itself! Maybe Amazon woman doesn’t really exist. She may have been a plant! But I also think you need to consider that one of the cats put those stones there just to watch the installation and have a good laugh. I think they’ve been plotting!

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  3. Your mystery stone(s) reminded me of when our girls were young and one of them took it upon herself to clean out the fish bowl. To show how responsible she was. Thing was, she put the gravel from the fish bowl down the drain with the disposal. I’m not sure how we found out about it–her telling, or someone flipping the switch. First-World problems, we have!

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  4. This amused me, although if it happened to me, I would not be so amused! I feel that life does throw us some strange situations. This one is inexplicable but I am like Jill, refusing to blame the kitties, Kate.

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  5. Any time I hear the words so easy to install that a child can do it … or this can be done in a half hour … I immediately figure the child is a prodigy and times the effort by three. Never a good time. Glad you got it installed with a minimum of bloodshed and your sanity still intact. 😉

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  6. We had to do this recently, too. Staff kept saying – don’t throw those down there. Don’t throw those down there! There were – and marginal garbage disposal choked. We must have bought the same model as the pluggy thing and wiring had to be changed (so not on the box information). When we moved here, I hoped this would be a tool free zone. Begging all the other appliances to hang in there until we decide to listen to daughter’s pleas to move closer.

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  9. Kate, you are just trying to kill us all right? I am laughing so hard over here that I think I’ve ruptured my funny bone!!! And I’m worried, because our garbage disposal just went out too we are talking of doing it ourselves this weekend. I think rather than buy one to do ourselves, we’d best buy the the Amazon women first!

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  10. Thank goodness murder incurred no blood although the gadget does look pretty red. Congratulations to the “beloved husband.” What a feat irregardless of the time it took.

    Our beloved Gilda Radner is ever present as it seems we can always hear her say “It’s always something.” In the last year at the city house we replaced the garbage disposal, ac and microwave. I remember calling our financial guy to report I needed 4 digits of $ because the ac went out, to which he cried out at the other end of the phone “Of course it did!” (Actually, his response startled me and reassured me at the same time. He did sound sympathetic…4 digits worth. ) Rick did replace the garbage disposal –yay–which alleviated some of the sting.

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  12. I am overcome with admiration for you, beloved husband and all your followers who comment with similar tales of household derring-do. Bill and I are moral, physical and ethical weaklings; we throw money at such difficulties, which is about all we can actually lift (or wave a credit card if we’re short of actual money) — and what do you know? Installation problems miraculously disappear!

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  13. Those crazy rocks! You’ll forever wonder how they got there, but there are some mysteries that never get solved.

    I’m keeping my fingers crossed that nothing breaks down. I’m not very handy or strong.

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  14. We replaced ours last fall after about 20 years. Installed it by ourselves too. Of course it is useful to have a retired electrician/handyman/good friend who lives next door. 🙂 Even then it took a while.
    I don’t know why I said “WE”. I left the house for the day.

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  16. Disposal is not fun. But, I’m guessing you haven’t tried replacing the kitchen sink faucet yet. On your back in the cabinet. The bottom of the faucet is way up there—pretty close to arm’s length. And, no room for tools between the sink and the wall.

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    • We did but it was in conjunction with the countertop replacement so someone else did it. We put a counter with a sink in our laundry room. After the faucet was installed (and yes, it was as bad as you say with bad words coming from the room), it didn’t work right. My husband was not going to remove it to return the faucet so we have had a spritzy one ever since. Plumbers are worth their weight in gold.

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    • This disposal was 11 years old. That’s old by our appliance standard. We moved into a new house 11 years ago and have replaced just about everything. In comparison, when my mother died we threw away her 50 year old refrigerator because it was ugly, not because it didn’t work! Really ugly with a freezer compartment the size of a pack of gum.

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  22. I know what you went thru. I replaced four of them in my lifetime, and I swear, I’ll not do it again. The instructions say it’s easy, but fails to mention how heavy they are. The car jack was genius, I never thought of that. Maybe I’ll call you guys next time.
    We just had our dishwasher & microwave replaced this week. It’s amazing how quick the professionals can do it.

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    • They have the right tools and don’t need to rely on instructions which are always written by someone who has English as their 20th language. We replaced our range last year. The guy at the appliance store convinced us it was a waste of our money to pay $150 for installation. As it turns out, the plug on the cord was larger and we couldn’t get the range back far enough. We needed to redo the electrical outlet. Nothing is ever easy.

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