Modern-Day Miracles Are All Around Us...Even In Appliances

I saw an advertisement months ago for a new car--I can't remember the brand. The set-up was this: you get people to ride around in a new car and record them gushing about how wonderful it is.

Pretty effective, right?

Of course, we're not going to be buying a new car anytime soon, but I thought about how I would react if it were me in that new car. I know I'd do the same exact thing. I'd react that way because the car would be so much more advanced than anything I'm used to. Even a car that's ten years newer than my car (say, something built in 2014...) would have options and features much more impressive.

That's why I've got to mention one incredible feature on our new dishwasher--the bottle-washing jets.

They're awesome!!

My wife makes kombucha at home. It's a simple process, but the biggest pain for us was washing the bottles we re-use each time. We had to hand wash them which seemed to take forever. I looked into buying something that might save us some time. There were things we could attach to our sink faucet, but we don't have the right kind of faucet, so those wouldn't work. When our old dishwasher died, my wife went shopping. When the salesperson mentioned the bottle jets, that's all he needed to say. He made the sale.

We've had everything in place for a few weeks and used the jets several times. It has literally saved us hours. I'm not sure, but had we known about that particular feature, we might have swapped out the working dishwasher we had years ago. I guess things are especially impressive when you're not used to the new stuff.

I Solved The Mystery Of...The New Dishwasher

We moved into our house in July 2003. It was brand new--everything was new, new floors, new paint, new fixtures, and new appliances.

Things are great when everything's new. They're not so great when those things break down. We've been extremely lucky when it comes to appliances, the only exception is our dishwasher. We're on our third. Because I swapped out our original with the second one, I was pretty confident that installing the new one would be a piece of cake.

About that assumption--I was both right and wrong.

Hooking everything up was easy. Then came the moment where I ease the dishwasher into its space, the place where the two previous dishwashers resided. I gently pushed it into place, and voila! Good as new!

Except it wasn't.

One side of the dishwasher stuck out about 1/2 of an inch longer than the other.

I've been thinking about why for the past couple of weeks. This morning I decided to pull out the dishwasher and do some investigating. I thought maybe either the water intake tube, the water exit tube, or the electrical cord were gettin gin the way.

Over the next hour I systematically eliminated each of the three attachments as the culprit in trying to answer why each side was different. I concluded the two water hoses nor the power cord were the problem. What could it be? Then an idea struck me and I fetched my tape measure.

It turns out whoever built our kitchen counter made one side of the dishwasher space a half an inch deeper than the other side. I guess the other dishwashers fit just fine, but this new one, it might be just a little bigger than the other two.

Now that I've solved the mystery, the slight imperfection is no big deal. And we love the new dishwasher. It has bottle washing jets built right in--that's the dream! I suppose it may be an issue for anyone who buys our house. If they're really picky, they'll have to tear up the counter and replace it, making sure it's 100% correct. One less thing in my life to try and figure out...