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)
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!
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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We have had our share of catastrophes but we are glass half full people. That way there is always something to spill.
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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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The “no blood spilt” was indeed a miracle. My husband smashes his digits over less.
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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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Oops! Well, it’s the thought that counts.
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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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I can’t blame the kitties either.
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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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Sanity? What sanity? A sane person would have contacted a plumber and gone out shopping.
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Agreed. That would be the first option for me. 😉
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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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Good luck with that. Most of our original appliances have fled to other climates.
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Death by stoning….so biblical. Glad it was only an appliance 🙂
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Again, you thought of the perfect phrase for it!
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HA! That is the perfect phrase.
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You are my self-installing heroine with hero help. Well done.
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Thanks but I don’t want to do again.
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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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If you can find her, invite her to your home! Here’s a tip…if you buy the same brand there’s a good chance you won’t have to change the connection fittings.
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I’ll remember that. And the search for the Amazon lady is on.
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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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I would much prefer to spend money on window treatments or furniture or something you see. Those hidden appliances don’t give the same sense of fulfillment!
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Amen! How I wanted to spend that $, time and energy on where we were moving to.
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Ahhh the “other” house. I missed that! That’s the worst! I put my home on the market many years ago and the water heater went out the following week. Really bad timing.
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Good golly. We’ve always hired someone to install a disposal so I had no idea how much they weighed. Kudos for solving your problem in a day.
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This one was considerably heavier than the old one we took out. We upgraded the horsepower from 1/2 to 5/8 and it seemed to add 10 pounds.
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No kidding? That much more weight. I’ll remember this if [when] the time comes to replace ours.
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Maybe you won’t have to replace it for a long time!
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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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You are far smarter than we are. At the beginning it sounds like a great idea to do it yourself. Halfway through not so much but you are stuck. No one wants to come in at the middle of a project.
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Learn from experience the next time?
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I’d like to think so but…..
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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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This house hasn’t been lucky that way. Everything has broken down. I’m hoping there is nothing original left to go.
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I had my kitchen and bathrooms remodeled within the last 5 years, so I should be good for a while.
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I hope so. Our refrigerator went at 6 years and the hot water heater around the same time. After that something went every year or so. The worst was the heat pump. Those suckers are big $$$$.
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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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I would have gleefully left for the day. However, that wasn’t allowed. 20 years is a good run. I hope this one lasts as long as we do.
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Wow, that is so odd, Kate. I wonder if the stones some how bubbled through the pipes with all of your crazy weather. I refuse to blame your wonderful cats. 🙂
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If it was a catnip mousie, I would say definitely the cats. They are not into stones. We’ll never know where it came from.
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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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As for the stones, the cats did it! Morgan….
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I sure hope not.
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Go you!
And as for the stone in the drain . . . GREMLINS! They take “missing” socks from the dryer, transform them into impediments, and cause havoc in our homes.
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Gotta find them critters!
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OMG, this happened to us too. We found a stone in our disposal soon after arriving here, and our landlord replaced the unit because it was ruined. How the hell does a stone get in these things?????
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I have no idea. We don’t bring stones in our house. It wasn’t a small pebble that you might find on a plant either. It was a huge sucker and it does bugger up the works.
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Gah!
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Double gah!
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We all know that appliances, large and small, are not made to last 35 years like the old refrigerators were. More’s the pity!
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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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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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