Not Exactly A Triumph

     But it's not a failure, either.  I bought some more time.

     The Ongoing Kitchen Appliance And Plumbing Disaster at Roseholme Cottage has many facets.  The appliances here when I moved in were mostly placeholders.  The electrical and plumbing was done by the previous homeowner and I have been (mostly) fixing it as it fails.  I seem to average one conked-out AC receptacle no matter what I do, but eventually I'll work my way through all of them.  The plumbing has received various professional and DIY fixes, and it's ongoing. 

     The original refrigerator was a floorspace-blocking disaster, and I replaced as I was moving in with search-engine-found wonder: cabinet-depth, freezer on the bottom, British-width.  It wasn't cheap and the only current match for size and arrangement is even less so, but it's the right fit for the space. The stove was old when I moved in and I hope to replace it eventually.

     The dishwasher was old, too.  Six months into the pandemic, it died and I started washing dishes by hand: replacements were hard to come by, service work was tricky to get, and....  I didn't want to deal with it.  Fresh meat and paper goods were scarce and rising in price and who knew what came next?

     Several weeks later, I discovered the drainer side of the double sink was backing up into the dead dishwasher through the garbage disposal (which we'd already stopped using: the drain pipe is long and smallish).  That was nasty to clean.  I did dishes in plastic dish tubs in the bathtub for a few days, working on my knees.*  I proved to myself that the other side of the sink didn't get into the dishwasher, thanks to the way flow is arranged, and graduated to a dish tub in the disposal side for washed dishes, a variation on single-sink dishwashing anyone who's lived in old apartments has used.  There was always a little spillage into the garbage disposal, but it wasn't enough to back up into the defunct dishwasher.

     That was a few years ago.  Lowe's treated me like crap the last time I went shopping for a new dishwasher (I was dressed for weekend woodworking, so that didn't help, but still...!) and I have kept on washing dishes by hand.  Recently, I noticed a little backup in the garbage disposal, but it was draining away eventually.  Until it wasn't.  I tried clearing it with a small plunger last night and made things worse.  Way worse.  I dumped some home-grade hydrogen peroxide in the nasty mess the plunger had brought up and left it overnight.  Today, well, the liquid was clearer.

     My oldest Shop-Vac, the smallest one they made thirty years ago, made short work of it.  I dumped the ick in the back yard, cleaned out everything I could reach in the disposal with strong cleaner, rinsed it and capped the drain.  That'll buy time.  I can mop up any spillage and now I'm going to have to replace the disposal and dishwasher.  It won't be easy.  Aside from the cost, I have to get a lot of books out of the way: the dining room library is an ongoing project, and another ongoing housekeeping disaster.  I've got one new set of shelves built and and about half moved into, and another set cut, measured for routing and ready to complete, stacked up in the garage.

     With the election so close, I think I will wait until afterward.  While I don't greatly expect there to be trouble, I'm not as sure as I used to be, and I'd just as soon flee screaming mobs with the price of a new dishwasher still in my pocket.

     It goes on and on.  I was so down about the sink mess that I slept very late today, with my Mother's voice in the back of my thoughts reminding me that not only does that not solve the problem, it uses up time that could have been spent solving it.
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* Something recent injuries have made impossible, at least for now.  It gets in the way of woodworking, too.  Lacking a nice big cabinetmaker's bench, I use the lovely flat slab of the garage floor, and you can't do that standing.  I can do a lot of it sitting on the floor, but some tasks take knee work or squatting, and those are both out.