Floored By a Washer

I could have had this washer at a flea market for $65. And it still worked. 

Appliances are sentient beings with evil intent. Just when you've got some big idea about how you're going to spend your money purtyin' up the house one way, they blow a gasket in another. No, really. Have you been talking to your significant other out loud about how much you'd love to go shopping for a new couch? Your refrigerator heard you, and I'm telling you, it's up to no good.

I've got a no-brand name apartment-size washer that came with the house, and while it's not really big enough for a family of five and kind of a water hog for its size, it worked, and we went with it.

Last couple of weeks, the bleach dispenser has dispensed bleach to more than one load with disastrous results, and also leaked out the bottom ruining a pile of towels that were on the floor awaiting the next load. The fabric softener dispenser is also leaking out the bottom of the washer too, and other rinky-dink things are beginning to go wrong with it, like little dead spots in the cycle dial.

Earlier this month I'd spent a great deal of time pestering my family, friends, and readers with little brown floor samples. I mean, what kind of person am I who asks the people I care about to discern between 20 different shades of tan? Yeah. Me. I should be whacked smartly about the head with a vinyl tile square.

New kitchen flooring is being put on hold for the time being. Because of the washer. It's still chugging along, but I feel that it's giving me signs of a more spectacular future collapse; what with its age and indifferent quality, I am not about to invest any money in repairing it.

Budgets being what they are (or in this case, being what they aren't), priorities had to be realigned with my bleach-hiccuping washer in mind (and I shake my fist in its general direction). The new kitchen floor will have to wait.

The kitchen, however, will not. We'll just have to move on to one of the lower cost, do-able items on the list, like paint. We will get the kitchen shaped up taking a slightly different path.

                          Source: flickr.com via Laura on Pinterest

On the downside, this wasn't in the plans. On the upside, with my local utility due to stiffly increase water rates over the next few years, it's probably a good time for me to invest in a water-saving front loader.

I'll be picking up the paintbrush instead over the next weeks. Onward!