Doin' the Dishes

Confession time: I'm a little stressed out.  While it may appear from my blog that we're cranking away on projects and enjoying the fall, the truth is that it's been a pretty crazy past month.  That's crazy with a Cah-ray and a Zah-eee.  My work has been incredibly busy, and I had a string of 23 days in which I worked 22.  I've also had to go on two, three day long work trips, and as anyone who travels for work knows, those trips can feel like lost time back at home.  Especially when the Hubs is working long and strange hours too, so we need to arrange for the little one to go stay at the grandparent's for a few days.  So I was thrilled when after coming home from my recent work trip, I found this in the kitchen:

Oh wait, did I say thrilled?  I meant ready to shoot someone.  Sorry for the confusion.

Not trying to come home all Bitchasaurous Rex, I started with the casual lead in.

Erin: "Hey Hubs, missed you.  How are you?  Say, what's the situation going on with the sink over there?"

Hubs:"Oh that?  Dishwasher is full."

Erin: "Oh... sure, sure.  Makes sense.  Totally.  Hey, what do you think?  Should we maybe run it?"

Hubs: "Don't have to.  It's full of clean dishes."

Erin: "Oh.  Full of clean dishes.  Got it.  And the sinks full of dirty ones.  Apt place for them I guess."

Hubs: "I get it.  I've been busy.  I'll empty it."


See how that just happened?  Just call me the Husband Whisperer.  Although maybe he's the genius around here, because before I event realized it I headed over to the dishwasher to start emptying.  Which is when the real problem began.

Don't see it?  Let me give you a close up:

Yep, that's about an inch and a half of standing water in the bottom of the dishwasher.  I closed up the lid and went to run the rinse cycle, but there was no power.  D.O.A.  I double checked the outlet to make sure it didn't come unplugged, and even went down to the fuse box to check.  Everything seemed fine, if "fine" means you have a sink full of dirty dishes and a dishwasher with no power.

Erin: "Say Hubs, when did the dishwasher break?"

Hubs: "What do you mean?"

Erin: "You know.  The whole it doesn't run thing.  No power.  Gross standing water.  All that fun stuff."

Hubs:  "I didn't notice."

Super.


Didn't I already fix this guy once? Grr.  So before unpacking, before making myself a late dinner, before throwing in a load of laundry, instead I hopped on the ole' internet machine to diagnose my dishwasher problem.  I went back to applianceblog.com and fixya.com with searches like "No power to Kenmore 665.477...."  It took a little digging, but after awhile it seemed that my problem might be as simple as a dead fuse.  Following the instructions from Fixya (and their incredibly helpful diagram,) I opened the dishwasher panel, took my volt meter and sure thing- power going into the fuse, no power coming back out.

It was only a $22 part, so I ordered it and waited the 5 long days for delivery.  Why do we always host parties whenever the dishwasher breaks?  I asked Jason what the chance was that I had ordered the correct part that would fix this bad boy the first time.  He said 1 in 10 million.  Then he did the dishes by hand, just in case you were wondering.  

When the part finally showed up, it came with really easy instructions on how to replace it, which is something I definitely didn't get the first time around.  This was super helpful, because it's kind of a mess in there.

Ten minutes later, Ry and closed up the beast, plugged it back in and pushed the power button.  We got a shiny green light and the sweet, sweet sound of water draining.  Hallelujah. 

The moral of this little rambling story?  Most of the fixes in your home can be solved with a little bravery and some internet research.  Seriously.  I never would have thought that I could open up, much less diagnose and fix a dishwasher.  But $22 bones later this baby is as good as new, and my beautiful zero radius sink looks like this again.

Yesssss.