Apparently, I suck at measuring

Every mother wants a dishwasher.  You’d be surprised (or maybe not) how many dishes one little one year old makes.  There’s all the sippy cups (one at each meal), little bowls, plates you warm things up on, little spoons.  Ok, so it doesn’t sound like much, but multiply it by 3 meals per day plus snack, plus another 2 sippy cups of milk each day, and you’ve got yourself a lot of dishes.  Oh, and don’t forget to add to all that the dishes you use for yourself and the rest of the family.  That’s one huge mound, every single day.

With this in mind, I convinced Aaron a dishwasher was certainly needed.

“Make sure the new one will fit.” Aaron warned me.  I measured the current dishwasher (that is over 20 years old and hasn’t been used in as many years, and has a sort of funk what wafts out when you open the door) and went in search of our new dishwasher.

Score!  I found one on special for $399. I pulled out the measurements that I had neatly folded in my pocket, borrowed the sales lady’s measuring tape (which was floral so “none of the boys will steal it”), and measured away.  She told me it wasn’t necessary to measure as dishwasher were of a standard size, but I insisted and did it anyway.  Odd looks aside, I got my measurements.  It seemed this new dishwasher was about 6 inches shorter than the old one.  It would fit no problem.

Finally, 11 days later, shiny new dishwasher arrived to a very excited Grandma and me.  I assured the delivery man that the old dishwasher had in fact been disconnected some 18 years ago.  Despite all his pulling, it was clear that old dishwasher was still connected.  We opened the cupboard and couldn’t find any holes where hoses could possibly sneak themselves in and plug into the pipes.  Hmm… odd.  Delivery man had no time to sort such a mess out that day, so he offered to install it all for us, cut a hole in the cupboard, unhook the old dishwasher, put in a new (needed) S bend, and take away all the rubbish for $70 a couple of days later.  Sounded good to us.

Yesterday, Delivery Man came back, un-installed the old dishwasher, put in the new s-bend, and then came to a halt.  The tap the dishwasher needed to connect to was so old that it wasn’t the standard size.  Delivery Man (to be referred to as DM from now on) marched off to get some sort of adapter.

“The new dishwasher looks bigger then the old one doesn’t it?” Grandma asked while DM was out.

I looked over at the 2 dishwashers sitting side by side. Fear ripped through me.  It was obvious, the new dishwasher was bigger then the old one.  I took a more detailed look.

“It’s ok, we’ll just get DM to take off  it’s feet.”

We laughed as we told DM of our new predicament.  I don’t think he knew what he was getting into when he offered to sort everything out for us.  He put the new part in, took the feet off, and then, the moment of truth.  Time to push the new dishwaher into it’s hidey hole.

We could only laugh, what else could we do?  It didn’t fit.  Well, okay, the left side did, but not the right.  I don’t know if the floor is uneven, the dishwasher, or the counter, but something isn’t quite right.  DM couldn’t do anything more for us.

All we have to do is shave a bit off the overhang of the counter and finally it will fit.  Since when did it get so hard to have a dishwasher?  New dishwasher is currently hooked up and sitting in front of it’s hidey hole.

Apparently, I suck at measuring.