Well, the old crappy dishwasher that came with the house finally went tits up. It wasn’t worth replacing right away as it did a passable job of cleaning the dishes and heated them up nicely, so I decided to either use it till it died, or replace it upon further kitchen remodeling down the road.
It died.
Noticed that the last batch of dishes a few days ago came out really spotty for some reason, bit since I got some spots anyway with each load, I figured it was just more of the same. Loaded the washer up and went to run it and noticed it didn’t finish the previous cycle (and upon further examination, there was standing water in the bottom too)… that would explain the spots, and also meant I needed to re-wash those dishes. So, cranked the dial around to run the latest batch. Nothing. It just stared up at me with flat lifeless eyes. I checked the breakers, flipped the retarded light switch that the building code requires to be able to turn off a dishwasher from above the counter, spun the knob a few more times… not a peep.
“Dammit, don’t you die on me!” I grabbed my tools and prepared for emergency, open panel surgery. I dismantled the front of the washer to expose all the wiring, searching desperately for a breaker of some sort. “Live, you sonofabitch, LIVE!” I confirmed I had power to every part of the washer (with this strange little toy/tool that Drew turned me on to that detects electrical fields), even the wash-selector dial. “NOOOOOOOOOOOO!” He was gone.
Ok, to be fair, there is likely some buried little part that is burnt out somewhere in the unit. I could call in a repair person to take up the torch where I left off with my amateur, yet logical knowledge of electrical appliances (having repaired quite a few in the past). But this washer is crap, and not worth the expense of a service call and subsequent replacement part, or even, to be honest, worth wasting more than the 45 minutes I spent on it last night. It was earmarked for the shitpile in the near foreseeable future, so I might as well bite the bullet and replace it now — It can always be moved to its new location when the eventual remodel happens anyway.
Part of me is pissed that it broke before I could replace it, but the rest of me is breathing a sigh of relief that I can now get a modern, efficient unit that will allow me to unload it without the need to inspect every piece of dishware to be sure it actually got clean. Sometimes you just need a valid excuse.