Five Home Remodeling Mistakes to Avoid

Introduction

Spring is in the air. Out in their driveways, your neighbors are beating on old Turkish rugs with broomsticks, maybe more enthusiastically than is really necessary. Birds are building nests in your trees, without asking. No matter where you look, spring cleaning and other restoration projects are underway. The warm breeze is whispering in your ear: “Time to start pulling your weight.” Or maybe that’s your spouse, and it’s proceeded from a whisper to plain speech to aggressive beseeching all the way up to a flat-out demand, which has become increasingly hard to ignore. So it’s time to bite the bullet and agree to a home remodel. This experience can be anything from transformative to ruinous to existentially harrowing, like a Lars Von Trier movie. Here are five mistakes to avoid.

Mistake #1: create a budget

Too many earnest homeowners think the first step in planning their renovation is to figure out how much they can afford, and scale the project accordingly. This is pure folly. As all home improvement veterans know, every single task will run over budget, and every part of the structure that is touched will unveil previously hidden damage. For example, what you thought of as a simple case of catastrophic dry-rot will turn out to be an ongoing termite infestation, and a foundation you thought was only rotating will turn out to be twisted like a strand of fusilli. That seismic retrofit you paid $5K for, to have the foundation bolted, will turn out to be purely cosmetic, as the foundation is bolted to nothing—that is, to thin air in your crawl space. And as often as not, routine excavation will turn up a body, meaning the murder squad forensics team is going to turn the whole place upside down. Where remodels are concerned, the #1 rule is, “If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.” Rule #2 is, “If you have to borrow money to pay for a remodel, you can’t even afford the home you have.”

Now, if you’re one of those data-driven people who simply must have hard numbers to work with, budget your entire nest egg for this, and what’s left over at the end will determine how long you’ll need to postpone your retirement. If you’re not prepared for that kind of commitment, you can opt for the “zone defense,” meaning you start with a single room to renovate and then if there’s any money left over, you can start to think about the next room, or at least the hallway.

Mistake #2: collaborate with your partner on the design

In some cases, a widowed or divorced homeowner will renovate his or her home, but usually these people are spending their money on fancy clothes, cool cars, and plastic surgery—as well they should. The truth is, most remodels are the work of a couple. And since this project will disrupt both of their lives for months or years, and define the space they’ll get old and die in, it can often seem like the two should work together on design decisions that will please both of them. But this is just a fantasy. It is the exceedingly rare couple that could agree on anything aesthetic or functional, and trying to find common ground is a sure way to bring on a protracted, acrimonious battle, threatening the marriage to the point that the house may end up being sold off instead of fixed up.

Where real-world remodels are concerned, one party or the other needs to call all the shots. Am I saying that one member of every couple should be a complete pushover? Not at all. I’m saying every good couple includes a person who is completely devoid of any opinion on matters of home design and décor. This person won’t mind foregoing all input and having blind faith that his or her spouse will make great decisions. In my own marriage, I have a verbal prenuptial agreement that my wife unilaterally makes all the choices, aesthetic and otherwise, about the home. I, in turn, get to store my racing bike in the home office.

Mistake #3: find alternate lodging during construction

Home remodels create an incredible amount of dust, noise, and other disruption, so it’s tempting to relocate your family to a hotel or Airbnb during construction. Bad idea. If your situation is typical, there’s about a 50% chance that your contractor will bail on your project halfway through, totally ghosting you and pocketing the hefty retainer you unwisely doled out. You need to do everything in your power to improve your odds of seeing your project through, and being onsite is part of that. As the saying goes, “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer”—and your contractor so close he can smell you. Breathing down his neck and threatening to micromanage his crew is the best way to motivate this person and his minions to get the work done, get their tools packed up, and get the hell out. (And if you’re worried about the health effects of inhaling all that dust, sawdust, and the welding fumes, consider that these people do asbestos abatement for a living, and they seem a hell of a lot healthier than you.)

Mistake #4: pay attention to ROI

Unlike many things we spend money on, fixing up our homes improves their value such that the project can seem to pay for itself. But this kind of thinking is a trap, and a sinister one. Real estate agents will tell you that all that matters, financially speaking, is location and square footage. This is true if you’re hoping to sell your home to a complete idiot, but hopefully you live in the kind of neighborhood that idiots can’t afford. The fact is, if you’re lucky, your home was designed by a professional who knew what he or she was doing and made the most effective use of the space available. And now you’re going to go tack some extra room onto the side of your house, like some kind of tumor, just to add square footage so your kids might inherit more money when you die, if some idiot buys the house? How does that serve you, exactly? The floor plan was right to begin with. Stop being greedy, and just resurface a couple floors, replace that grody tile, slap up a fresh coat of paint, and honor what your home is supposed to be: a living space, not an investment vehicle. In other words, forget about ROI.

Mistake #5: get all the necessary permits

A responsible homeowner doesn’t cut corners, and gets all the necessary permits when remodeling. Though this obviously makes all kinds of sense, it’s not enough to protect you from serious financial distress or even complete ruin—because permits don’t prevent cost overruns, they enable them. That’s where the proper approach to permitting can really save you. Just follow this rule of thumb: if you need to pull a permit to get something done, that shouldn’t be part of your remodel. For example, if you want to add a bedroom, that definitely requires a permit, whereas adding a bed to the existing room does not. (May I recommend a bunk bed in this instance?)

Obviously there are simple things you can do without a permit—such as painting, tiling, carpeting, installing new counter tops, and finally scrubbing that toilet—that will make your home much more livable without burying you financially. But did you know there are other, bigger improvements that still don’t require a permit? In Berkeley, as you can confirm here, you’re allowed to construct an oil derrick without a permit! Do your neighbors have one of those? Didn’t think so!

One mistake you shouldn’t avoid

You might have thought it redundant that I’ve listed “mistakes to avoid,” since “something to avoid” is baked into the very meaning of “mistake.” But we’re not robots, we’re people, and I’m going to actually recommend a mistake: dare to fall in love again. You loved this house once, with its avocado-colored appliances and its knob-and-tube wiring, its total lack of insulation and its single, overworked bathroom. How come those weren’t show-stoppers before? Didn’t you use to find it charming when you’d start the microwave oven and all the lights would flicker? Wasn’t it cozy staying in bed because it was too cold to venture out? Isn’t it possible that all this desire for so-called “improvement” is just a result of boredom? Haven’t you lived ten, twenty, or more years in your home without having an oil derrick out back?

Gosh, I made such a good case just now for leaving well enough alone, I might have convinced you this isn’t a mistake. Well, it is. Once your spouse starts lusting after home improvement, you’ve have to be crazy to stand in her way … but it just may be a lunatic she’s looking for. No, it isn’t. Damn, I’m really losing the thread here. Let’s just say at least you now know what the mistakes are. Make them or don’t—it’s none of my business.

Disclaimer

As you may have gathered, I’m not really qualified to dispense advice here. I did very little research for this post, and what I try to convey as sound practices are based mainly on my own knee-jerk reaction to a prospect that frightens me. Also, my neighbors have never beaten their rugs out in the driveway … I don’t know where I got that.

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More Plumbing for Dummies

Introduction

This post recounts my third foray into amateur plumbing. Are we talking “heart of darkness” territory? No, more like brain of darkness. But don’t expect a thriller involving a geyser of raw sewage like last time; my 15-year-old daughter seemed bored by today’s tale. But if you think you’re more patient than she is (hint: if you’ve made it this far, you probably are), read on.

The rules

Amateur plumbing is not for the fainthearted. Fortunately I am the beneficiary of my father’s wisdom here, as he taught me some rules I should always keep in mind before diving in. Ha. Ha ha ha ha ha. Of course that’s not true. That’s a nice Norman Rockwell sentiment: good ol’ pop teaching his kid the ropes. The truth is, my dad never had time to sit me down and explain anything.

This isn’t to say he was ignorant about plumbing; he could be quite clever. For example, he built a contraption that would detect when his hot water heater had failed, and would automatically drain it somehow without flooding his house. (This makes almost as much sense as periodically replacing your hot water heater.) But that was many years before I was born so I didn’t get to work alongside him, handing up wrenches and drinking in his tutelage. By the time I came along, my dad’s strategy had shifted to dodging plumbing issues for as long as possible. Eventually, his home’s master bathroom actually lacked a toilet. To be precise, he had bought a new toilet, but for years and years never got around to installing it, and the unfinished project ultimately outlived him.

I do have a set of rules around such undertakings, which come from my own observation and some lessons imparted by a bike shop boss decades ago. They aren’t specific to plumbing, but cover any kind of tricky repair. Here they are:

• Don’t bite off more than you can chew. Professionals (such as plumbers) charge a lot for a reason.
• Don’t start a project when you’re tired and stressed out.
• Leave yourself plenty of time so you don’t end up with a half-finished project.
• Make sure you’re always working with plenty of light.
• Don’t start a tricky job on an empty stomach.
• Make sure you have resources lined up in case you get stuck.

I’m sure this list isn’t complete … feel free to add your own guidelines in the comments section below.

My plumbing predicament

From the standpoint of running water, my home is a minefield. The water pressure from the municipal utility district is plenty high—in fact, it’s too high, so my drip irrigation system is prone to sudden hose failures—but virtually all the pipes within the house are original, from 1929. They’re galvanized steel rather than copper, and they’re rusting inside. This means that little bits are forever flaking off and getting carried along with the water until they reach a faucet or shower head, which traps them. This causes clogs that severely hamper the flow. To solve the problem—i.e., replace all the rotting pipes—would be a major undertaking requiring many thousands of dollars. So I put up with it.

As a result, I’m on my third bathroom sink. I’ve tried to take apart the faucets and get rid of the crap clogging them up, but to no avail. Two different plumbers have insisted that there’s nothing to be done. “There’s a cartridge in there, and once it’s clogged, the whole fixture is shot,” they claim. Excuse me, but doesn’t “cartridge” imply something that can be easily replaced? Apparently not. So recently, my fairly new kitchen faucet, which I happen to really like, started to bog down. The flow has been weakening, gradually but steadily, for months. This has driven me crazy. I cannot continue to hemorrhage money on new faucets, but neither can I bear to plunk down many thousands of dollars to replace plumbing that more or less works. Meanwhile, I refuse to get another plumber in here to tell me there’s nothing to be done but replace a bunch more hardware and pay him a bunch more money.

So, with all the aforementioned rules in mind, I finally tackled the problem myself the other night. Here’s how that went, organized by my amateur plumbing rules.

Don’t bite off more than you can chew

To recap, professional plumbers have told me you can’t fix a clogged faucet. On that basis alone, my home repair attempt was arguably foolish from the get-go. The kitchen faucet is more complicated than the bathroom ones that the plumbers threw up their hands over. It’s got the hose you can pull out, and the button that switches between fill and spray. Moreover, the lines feeding it (which are built into it and non-removable) are remarkably inflexible and scrawny. There’s all kinds of room for problems here. I was well aware of all this when contemplating my repair and deciding whether to move forward.

Don’t start a project when you’re tired or stressed out

I’m tired and stressed out most of the time these days. I have two teenage daughters, a difficult job, and too many responsibilities. Moreover, when contemplating this repair I had just finished doing my taxes (which was particularly stressful due to the major changes in the tax code and their fiscally painful repercussions). What pretty much put me over the edge was that the flow from this faucet had gotten so low it was no longer possible to wash my hands. It was like the urine output from an old man with a significantly enlarged prostate. So I was beyond tired and stress out—I was livid.

Leave yourself plenty of time

It was late evening. I was supposed to be cooking dinner for my kids, as my wife was at her night class. I was also supposed to be packing for a multi-day family road trip. We’d be leaving early in the morning the next day. In no way would I have enough time to recover from difficulties associated with this repair. I almost cannot imagine a worse time to begin.

Make sure you have plenty of light

It’s actually almost impossible for me to have good light anymore, because as I age, my vision is failing. I’m so nearsighted, an object just a few feet away is too hard to see clearly without glasses, but with my glasses anything less than two feet away is blurry. I really need bifocals, but I’m just not psychologically ready to handle that, nor am I ready to start sliding my glasses down my nose and peering over them.

I do have a great work lamp I could plug in, but I get nervous using it around water sources, for two reasons: first, the electrical outlet under my sink doesn’t have GFI, and second, the lamp might heat up my work area to where I’d start sweating too much to grip my tools. At least, these are the reasons I came up with. The reality is, I was just too impatient and lazy to set up the light.

Don’t work on an empty stomach

I hadn’t had dinner, remember? I was too impatient to have a snack before getting started, so I was good and hangry. My blood sugar was surely very low, but of course my brain doesn’t work very well in this state so I was ignoring the inner voice that warned me I was being foolish.

Have appropriate resources lined up

I had no resources lined up. The hardware store would be closing soon, and I couldn’t reach my brother Bryan, the guy I usually turn to for advice. (Click here for the transcript of my last plumbing-related chat with him.) Perhaps the most important resource would have been my wife, as she would have certainly talked me out of this ill-conceived effort from the get-go. Ironically, this was one of the main reasons I did decide to go ahead with the repair: because I knew if I waited, she’d be around to talk sense into me. And I didn’t want to be sensible. I was incensed.

So how did all this pan out?

Well, first I disconnected the faucet from the main water supply to see how the flow was without it. Wow, it was great! So great it caused a minor flood in the cabinet under the sink! That was a hassle, but I was relieved I didn’t have a bigger problem. (The rusting pipes explanation was just a theory, after all.) So then I disconnected the part of the hose that goes through the faucet from the two narrow, stiff, plastic lines feeding it. I took the faucet/hose assembly out into the garage to see if forcing compressed air through it, via my soda bottle air compressor, would help.

My younger daughter helped with this part, manning the bike pump. This gave me both my hands free to try to hold the surgical tubing against the rest of the whole mess. A lot of air leaked out, but still a fair bit of water shot out everywhere, and though I was entirely dubious that any of this would make any difference, at least it felt good to be doing something. An added bonus was that the two-liter soda bottle didn’t explode, so neither my daughter nor I came away horribly disfigured or deafened. Later, with the benefit of hindsight, I would realize how crazy this entire approach had been, but of course I wasn’t thinking straight at this point in the process.

I hooked everything back up again and if anything, the flow was even worse. I was beginning to despair, because believe me, the fact of my ignoring all six of my amateur plumbing rules was not lost on me. Moreover, I was acutely aware that I really had no idea what the hell I was doing.

So I turned my attention to the head of the faucet. There was a little plastic cylinder between the hose and the head that was intriguing. It had no little flats to accept a wrench; no little arrows indicating how to twist anything; no little screws to unscrew. But there was a tiny plastic button (visible when I took off my glasses) that seemed to do nothing, but obviously existed for a reason. I pushed it in and twisted every which way at the cylinder it was embedded in, and eventually something broke free (at first I thought, horrified, that it had actually broken, based on the sound it made). Now, I was able to take the innards of the faucet head apart.

There was a ton of crap in there, tiny bits of rust like fine gravel, little jackstones and shards and whatnot, and I scraped them out with the pointy end of a chopstick. I put it all back together, struggled a bit due to the crudely made (but it must be said, thoughtfully designed) ring assembly, turned the faucet on, and—EUREKA!—the water came gushing out like a damn hydrant! Like Niagara Falls! I let out a whoop of pure joy. After the abject, willful stupidity I’d indulged in pursuing my benighted campaign against forces far greater than I, I’d somehow managed to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat!

I immediately poured a Bear Republic Racer 5 IPA and had my younger daughter help me create this celebratory Beck’st:

(Alas, I don’t have a “before” picture showing the faucet’s pathetic trickle of water from only half its jets. It never occurred to me to photograph it.)

I struggle to convey to you just how totally stoked I was to have won out against the rust clogging my faucet. To ignore so many warning signs and yet prevail … it was like something that only happens on TV, like in the final seven minutes of a “Star Trek” episode. Never mind that the repair itself, upon reflection, wasn’t actually ingenious or anything; the point was, I’d confronted a soul-crushing problem that had been increasingly weighing on me for months, and had kicked its ass!

For a couple minutes, with my mystified (and bored and hungry) kids looking on, I just turned that faucet on and off over and over, watching the water blast out like magic. I felt like Eeyore putting his (popped) birthday balloon into his (empty) honey pot and taking it back out again delightedly, declaring, “It goes in and out like anything.’”

The next morning, my wife was predictably astonished that I’d taken on such a foolhardy project at such an inopportune time. Examining my motivation after the fact, I was able to explain: while it’s true that I’d had half a dozen good reasons to put off my repair, I’m sure my dad had, too, with that toilet he never got around to installing. Waiting for some magic opportunity to bang out a home repair can be a slippery slope. Throughout my childhood, problems continually went unsolved or un-tackled and there was nothing I could do about it. As I make my own way through adult life, I find I’d rather crash and burn than risk continuing my dad’s legacy of procrastination.

Further reading

Dishwasher Man

Plumbing Emergencies for Dummies

The Sissy Syndrome

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Plumbing Emergencies for Dummies

NOTE:  This post is rated PG-13 for pervasive crude humor and mild strong language.

Introduction

This post is about how to handle a simple plumbing emergency if you’re a dummy.  Actually, you could be a really smart person who just doesn’t know anything about plumbing and this might still be helpful.  Or, you could be really smart and knowledgeable about plumbing and might just enjoy surveying the hapless coping techniques that a dummy has stumbled upon.  Or, you could just be anybody with a taste for schadenfreude who would enjoy a story containing the phrase “geyser of raw sewage.”

 Rule #1:  Figure out where the unwanted water is coming from

Shortly after buying our first home, my wife and I went on vacation.  We were touring Bay Area B&Bs, and on the way from Half Moon Bay to San Francisco decided to stop at the house.  (I know, it’s not really on the way, but we were giddy new homeowners.)  I was in the garage, perhaps for no other reason than to bask in its existence, when a crazy thing happened.  There is a open-ended pipe near the far wall, where the washing machine would have been had we gotten around to buying it, and the purpose of this pipe is to carry wastewater away from a washing machine.  For no apparent reason, raw sewage suddenly began gushing out of this pipe.

(Why is it always “raw” sewage?  Isn’t sewage always raw?  Who ever heard of boiling sewage?  “Don't worry, this sewage is potable.  It’s been boiled.”  I don’t know the answer to this question.  You’d have to ask somebody more knowledgeable about plumbing.)

So, back to the garage plumbing crisis.  My first impulse was to yell “NO!” and reach toward it, but of course all of this happened in super-slow-motion so my “NO” was several octaves lower than my real voice and really slow, to match my movements, so it was more of a “NOOOOOOOOOOOO......”

Now, that water could have been coming from anywhere, but the sewage factor led me to a lucky guess that the toilet was involved.  Fortunately (in this case and this case only) we have only one bathroom, so I ran up there.  Sure enough, there was a terrible hissing noise coming from that room.  I can’t remember if it was from the toilet itself or the related plumbing—it could have been coming from my wife or even myself, I mean this was a long time ago—but the toilet-related plumbing was the culprit.  At least I was in the right room.

Rule #2:  Don’t panic

I know, “don’t panic” is easy enough to say, but something about a plumbing emergency makes it really tempting to panic.  If you were to tell somebody, “The entire house was flooded and I—I panicked!” they probably wouldn’t hold it against you.  But still, you shouldn’t panic.  Take something as simple as a toilet on its way to overflowing the rim.  If this isn’t happening in a motel room where a previous guy’s digestive output could be in play, you’re a coward if you don’t keep your wits about you and take immediate action.  One action of course would be to grab a plunger if it’s handy, but the better action is to quickly remove the toilet tank lid and lift the floating thingy in there.  (I could call it a “floater,” but in the toilet context that term has already been taken.)  Sometimes this floating thingy is a big ball, sometimes it’s a hollow cylinder, but the point is, as the water level rises in the toilet tank, the thingy floats upward until it maxes out and shuts off the flow.  So if you grab that bad boy and lift it, the toilet will instantly stop overflowing.  Then you can yell your head off for somebody to run in with a plunger, towels, etc. before anything has hit the floor.

In the case of the garage sewage spew, I looked for the line that feeds water into the toilet.  These lines have little handles on them and if you crank down the handle (clockwise) it’ll shut off the water supply.  This is what I did to stop the gushing sewage in the garage (but not before several of my bicycles were covered in putrid water with flecks of half-dissolved toilet paper and lots of other gross stuff).

Rule #3:  Get help

Getting help isn’t the first step.  It’s something that should be done concurrently with getting the water flow to stop.  Unless your next door neighbor is a plumber who telecommutes, you want to first do what you yourself can do, as soon and as fast as you can.  When the immediate crisis is averted (i.e., no more water going where it doesn’t belong) that’s when you bring in the plumber and whoever else is needed to put your life back together.

My brother Max lives in Boulder, Colorado and during their recent nightmarish flood was in the process of baling water out of his flooded basement when the next-door neighbor came running over.  This guy presumably did a great job with Rule #1 (he astutely observed that the water was coming from FRICKING EVERYWHERE), but he completely fell down on #2.  He came running into Max’s house yelling his head off.  “Oh my god, you gotta help me!” he cried.  I mean, think about this.  The entire city is flooded, roads have been demolished, creeks overflowing, cars washed away, thousands of souls are in great danger and turmoil, and “you gotta help me”?  He went on, “I got thirty gallons a second comin’ into my house!”  I can’t help but wonder, did he just make up this statistic somehow, to use as a rallying cry, or did he actually make some crude measurement of water volume and do the math?  Is that the first order of business, calculating the flow rate?  So having announced his crisis to my nonplussed brother, he whipped out his cell phone and started calling plumbers.  As if every plumber in the state isn’t already addressing a crisis, perhaps his own.  As if the National Guard hasn’t already been deployed.  This neighbor is yelling into the phone, “I’m payin’ cash!”

In this particular case, however, the guy happened to stumble on the right neighbor.  Max is a great big manly man, could easily kick my ass (in fact, he has, multiple times) and he knows his way around homes and plumbing and crises.  In fact, he has an honest-to-god construction worker’s hardhat, and not only that, he’s got this big badass spelunker’s light mounted to it.  All this and he’s a helpful enough guy, or at least morbidly curious enough, that he headed right over to the guy’s house, temporarily abandoning his own crisis.  As Max gleefully related to me afterward, this guy’s toilet was doing the weirdest thing.  Every few seconds it would projectile-vomit a massive gush of raw sewage.  Like, ten gallons at a shot, with this menacing regularity.  So Max ran out to the yard and found the clean-out. 

Now, I’m not entirely sure what a clean-out even is, beyond it being related to the sewage system.  I know that “clean-out” is a term that manly men throw around when they’re describing their weekend projects.  (Sure, I could look it up in Wikipedia, but that’s cheating.  You’re supposed to learn about these things first-hand, in the field.)  Max found this clean-out because it had a big metal lid or cap on it.  Maybe they always do.  Anyway, he used some giant tool that he happened to be carrying, a big old monkey wrench or crowbar or something, and pried that lid off.  He said there was instantly this unbelievably massive—wait for it—geyser of raw sewage, going way high up there into the air, almost like Old Faithful.  And it was endless, like it was feeding right off the entire sewer system of the city, an endless foul fountain.  Max booked it back into the neighbor’s house, confirmed that nothing was coming out of the toilet anymore, and then hustled on home to work some more on his basement.  So, this neighbor?  Yeah, he got real lucky! 

(This phrase “real lucky” is one my brothers and I throw around a lot.  It hearkens to something my dad once said to me, when I was parking my car and got too close to a broken concrete curb outcropping, and it stripped the trim right off the side of my ’84 Volvo.  This freak accident made a terrible noise, like the car was shrieking, and when my dad got out he was shocked—almost disappointed, it seemed—that my comeuppance involved so little damage.  I zipped the trim right back on to the car, and my dad said, “You are real lucky you didn’t do more damage.”  For him to use the adjective “real,” where the adverb “really” is called for, is tantamount to the harshest profanity, given his normally gentle, professorial syntax.)

 Rule #5:  get that water shut down!

I guess this rule is kind of implicit in what I’ve already said, but this is a guide for dummies.  So, assuming you’re not involved in a catastrophic flash flood, or even if you are, see if you can’t get that flow shut off.  Sometimes this can be tricky even when your plumbing disaster is localized.  For example, the other day I was in the kitchen when I heard this hissing noise coming from upstairs.  I ran up there and the floor was completely flooded.  There was a strong blast of water coming from below the bathroom sink.  Remember what I said earlier, about finding the line that carries the water, and looking for the little handle that turns it off?  Well, the little handle was lying on the floor.  Dead.  The cylinder that it attaches to, that ends in a rubber plug that closes off the water, was made of plastic, and had spontaneously failed.  It broke in half, so the handle part went shooting off and there was nothing to stop the water from spraying out like a high pressure hose.

Here’s where I made my first mistake.  I paused, staring at the cheap piece of treasonous plastic, and I took a moment to marvel at the pure, unalloyed venality that caused somebody to decide to make this thing out of plastic.  I mean, what if I’d been on vacation when this thing broke?  That could be thousands and thousands of dollars in damage to my home.  How much did that company save skimping on materials?  Maybe a cent?  So I took a moment to curse whoever chose plastic as the material.  My curse was this:  May you be waterboarded to death in a campground outhouse.  (I know, that’s pretty harsh, but I was in the middle of a crisis and trying not to panic.  I’ve since rescinded my curse, though perhaps too late, who knows.)

Okay, wasting time pausing to curse persons unknown wasn’t actually my first mistake.  My first mistake was not knowing in advance how to shut down the water supply to my entire house.  Everybody should know how to do this.  In modern homes there’s usually a very large pipe in the garage with a big handle on it, so it’s really easy.  (In the state of Washington, my brother Bryan tells me, there’s a giant knob in every garage, and it’s painted red and white so it’s especially easy to find.)  In my home, built in 1929, there is no obvious way to shut off the water.  I’ve long assumed it has something to do with the pipe under a plastic lid in my yard where the water meter is.  There are weird, crude steel thingies down in there, at ninety degrees to each other, and I reckon if you could line them up, the water would stop. 

So, my bathroom still actively flooding, I raced down there to the yard, pried that lid off, and tried to budge the machinery down in there.  I did this using a weird quasi-wrench, long and totally rusted and of the cheapest imaginable quality, that my wife had suddenly handed me.  She had found it near the guts of our drip irrigation system and figured it must be the thing.  Well, I did manage to get a purchase on the weird clunky metal doohickeys down in the ground near the water meter, but I couldn’t budge them.  The crude tool was flexing so much I thought it’d break in half.  The next obvious step was to panic.

But, I didn’t panic, since I always keep Rule #2 in mind.  I asked myself, “What would Captain Kirk do?”  So I thought hard for about two seconds and then it hit me:  “Spock ... the water coming out of that sink line ... it’s hot!”  Meaning:  it came from the hot water heater!  I raced into the garage, found the pipes coming off the hot water heater, and cranked them closed.  I ran to the bathroom:  no more gushing.  Whew!  (I know what you’re thinking:  what if it had been the other cheap plastic valve that had broken, the cold water side?  I know.  You could say that I’m real lucky.)

Rule #6:  After the crisis, see what you can fix yourself

I went back downstairs.  My wife was on the phone, trying to get help.  “Who are you talking to?” I asked.  (You can tell I was still a bit frazzled because I said “who” where “whom” is called for.)  She said she was on hold.  “Hang up,” I said.  (It’s possible I said “Hang up on that fool!” but this is probably the embroidery of memory.  I know I didn’t say “Hang up ... I got this,” because that would have been pure hubris.)  I showed her what broke and announced my intention to head over to the hardware store.  She immediately shot down this idea and starting researching plumbing supply outfits online.

I initially bristled at this—I mean, browsing in a hardware store is one of life’s great joys, especially (perhaps) for men.  When my dad used to go to McGuckin’s, the totally kickass hardware store in Boulder, he’d always ask if we kids wanted to go along.  We always did.  That place was amazing.  Absolutely giant, and there was nothing they didn’t have.  It was like a hardware cathedral.  A friend of my brothers ended up working there, and let us in on a little trade secret.  Whenever a particularly gorgeous woman was spotted by an employee, he’d immediately get on the PA system and announce her location using the code name “Larry.”  For example, if she were in the Bolts section, he’d get on and say, “Larry to Bolts, Larry to Bolts.”  All the male employees would immediately head over to the Bolts section to check her out.  This went on for ages until some manager suddenly realized, “Hey, we don’t have any employees here named Larry!”  He put an end to the practice, though I’m sure they developed a work-around.

Anyway, I looked over my wife’s shoulder and saw on her screen photos of the entire valve assembly, which I’ve come to learn is called an “angle supply stop.”  They were priced at like $40 or $50, which seemed pretty high when all I really needed was the little internal cylinder doohickey.  She got on the phone to some local place and explained the issue in such a way that I was completely lost, even though I knew exactly what she was trying to say.  (Not that I’m complaining, having recently used the term “doohickey” myself.)  Eventually she handed the phone to me and I explained it in my own words.  The guy said the thing I needed was called a “nipple” and could be had in various non-plastic materials.  I don’t know how my wife chose the place she did, but when I looked at it with Google Maps Street View I realized this wasn’t exactly a boutique.

I went down there and showed them the broken piece, mentioned that the guy on the phone said it was a nipple, of which he had many, and they looked at me like I was crazy.  I showed them the handle that attached to it, and then pulled up a photo of the whole assembly that I’d taken on my smartphone.  They said I’d have to replace the entire assembly.  I couldn’t help but wonder if the fact of my flashy smartphone had led to this diagnosis.  You know, kind of a luxury tax.  If I’d flashed a gold iPhone 5S, maybe they’d have said I needed a whole new sink!

So this guy got a new angle supply stop, and I could see right off that its internal cylinder was made of plastic.  I complained about this.  “That’s the only way they make them,” the guy said.  I was about to reply that I’d rather go without a bathroom sink than to pay good money for another plumbing time bomb when another guy said, “I think that’s the wrong size.”  He stared at my photo.  I realized I should have put a ruler in the frame before snapping the photo.  This second guy went and found the right size angle supply stop, which was fancier and had no plastic in it.  It’s chrome-plated brass, and lead-free (though the box says “lead-free*,” and the asterisk might mean “sort of”).

The good news is, the angle supply stops were only $7 (apparently these things are much cheaper at the Blair Witch Plumbing Emporium than online) and a cinch to install.  (Well, the hot water side was a cinch.  I bought two of them, needless to say, so I can preemptively replace the other side, just as soon as I can figure out how to shut off the water supply to the entire house.  Still working on that.)

Rule #7:  Figure out how to shut off your water BEFORE you have a plumbing emergency

See above.  Maybe this should actually be Rule #1....

From the Archives - The Sissy Syndrome

oooo
Introduction

My recent dishwasher installation project, and various other home improvement projects over the years, remind me of an essay I wrote long ago called “The Sissy Syndrome.” I wrote it because it needed to be written, but at that time I had no way to publish or otherwise propagate such essays. Thus, I’m not sure any living human has ever laid eyes on this one. As you will see, it concerns a double-standard: not a simple, well-understood one like women face, but a thornier, more complex one that torments men. I have found it and dusted it off, and present it here as a companion piece to “Dishwasher Man.”

The Sissy Syndrome - February 1, 2003

No doubt women have been screwed in many ways by the process of their liberation. For example, men expect women who work full time to continue doing most of the “women’s work.” But the glory days of this double standard are behind us; it was my dad’s generation who got to skip out on most forms of housework while enjoying the fruits of a double income. I’m always eager to pile on when our wives and mothers bemoan the complete injustice of the woman’s double role, but let’s let that be their thing. I have my own bone to pick with the evolution of the sexes.

My beef is this: men have come a long way toward contributing equally to the ongoing housekeeping and child-rearing duties; have developed impressive cooking and diaper-changing and even ironing skills; have sincerely adopted the principles of gender equality; have even learned how to be emotionally sensitive in a manly, non-effete way—and yet both women and men alike are still immersed in the timeless conviction that all men should have the robust, uncomplaining, tireless physical strength and invulnerable armored flesh of the day laborer.

It’s all well and good that modern men are comfortable with abstract mental operations, delicate sociopolitical maneuverings, and ballsy professional grandstanding; that we have a real appreciation for high culture; that we possess the unflagging patience and tenacity required by, say, a mortgage refinancing transaction—but all of this is for naught if we men don’t have an intuitive understanding of, and love for, every power tool and toxic solvent known to man, along with the cheerful willingness to haul all manner of large heavy object. It’s understood that we have a natural affinity, and even enthusiasm, for any brute-force earth-moving project our women can throw at us.

Men don’t get to substitute the ability to choose a necktie for, say, the willingness to unclog a rain gutter. If for all our amateurish efforts with the belt sander we still can’t make the doors in the house close quietly, it doesn’t matter if we can go eyeball-to-eyeball with an angry executive and successfully push through a deal he’s not happy with. Modern business tools or intellectual powers alone cannot make us men, they just makes us better Smurfs. But it’s not the women applying this judgment; the self-loathing comes largely from within. If I can resolve a static IP routing problem on a frame relay interface and bring all the Jiffy Lube stores in the nation back online, but still have to pay somebody to change the oil in my own car, I still feel like a poor excuse for a man.

In fact, if I can have a heart-to-heart talk with my wife and help restore contentment after a painful emotional storm, that almost makes it worse when I get a paper cut in the tender, peach-skin flesh of my finger. On some level, I truly believe that our women would secretly jump at the chance to trade in our advanced verbal skills for the chance to watch us bore a mining tunnel into solid rock with nothing more than a pickaxe swung by graceful and powerful muscles. Beyond the show of strength—and here is the important point—there’s work to be done. And often they need a man to do it.

On some base visceral level, women must be as conflicted as modern men are about our modern refined sense of home-decorating aesthetics and our spirit of familial cooperation. So what if we do half the diaper changing around here? It’s helpful, sure, but a woman doesn’t need a man for that. Women sincerely love it that we’re affectionate with our babies: but wouldn’t it be even better if we could cuddle those babies after building a redwood deck out back?

Perhaps the modern woman would hold firm and maintain that she really, truly is above all that, and if given the choice, she’d actually trade in our ability to fix the sump pump for a willingness to read a book on ovulation. But I know all about spoken positions: they’re easy enough to have because they seldom get tested. (My dad is a feminist from way back, as fair and even-handed is they come, but—happily enough for him—this managed not to result in his doing any laundering or dishwashing when I was growing up.)

Without any behavior to study, the only way to prove or disprove one’s progressive attitudes would be to employ a polygraph machine. And I think it’s the same way with the attitudes women have toward backbreaking manual labor and the male. It’s subtle. They don’t have to say, “Hey, are you going to dig up that tree, or are you worried you’ll get a blister on your finger or throw out your back or not end up being strong enough for the job?” It’s all implied. All they need to say is “That tree needs to be dug up,” and the following chain reaction is automatically kicked off in the man’s brain:

She wants this tree dug up.

Digging up a tree is hard work, requiring strong muscles and tough hands.

She is not as strong as I am.

Her skin is not as tough as mine.

Based on my superior strength and tougher skin, I am not only the logical choice for this job, but it would be shameful for me to allow her to do this herself.

Hard though it may be to dig up a tree, this and countless other much harder jobs have been done by normal male individuals throughout time.

Based on the countless number of individuals who could dig up this tree, if my muscles are not strong enough or my skin not tough enough to do the job, I am actually a lot more like her than I am like the men who do this kind of thing routinely; that is, I am not really a man at all, but more like a modern woman who happens to own a penis.

If I do this job but complain about it, I am maybe just barely a man, since I live in a world of real, uncomplaining men, any of whom she might come to wish she had around instead of me.

Naturally, it doesn’t seem appropriate for me to complain about this state of affairs. After all, men enjoy being stronger; on average we make more money than women, for no good reason; we still dominate high offices throughout the world; we get to pee standing up; and we never have to wear panty hose. Maybe I should just keep my mouth shut. But I do feel justified in pointing out that at least on this homemaking front, the tide is turning in an unfavorable direction for us men, and not just in the reversal of past ills. Without attempting an exhaustive discussion of the equality of the sexes—after all, I don’t want to stray too far from my main thesis—let me take a minute to address the chance examples I just gave:

Without much hand-to-hand combat or many long marches through the mire with a badly injured comrade on our backs, the modern American adult, male or female, has little need for great physical strength; indeed, there’s a downside to this strength—the burden of it—that I hope to make clear in this essay.

It’s immaterial how much money the average male makes compared to the average female, since a) my wife’s and my incomes are combined anyway; b) this is just another area where I risk falling short of my male peers; and c) it makes zero sense for me to actually wish for this state of affairs, since I want my wife to make as much money as possible, ideally many times more than I do.

Men’s high office stranglehold is of no benefit to us, as these leaders are totally beholden to corporations, lobbyists, and pundits anyway; moreover, the tendency of people to elect men instead of women only benefits me if I’m a chauvinist (which I’m not) or want to run for office myself (which I don’t).

Okay, I have to admit, peeing standing up is great, but the average person only goes six times a day, and one of those times is at night when we have to sit down anyway, so it’s just not that big a deal.

Women almost never wear panty hose anymore, and women’s slacks today don’t look any less comfortable than men’s.

But these considerations are beside the main point: that there is really no female equivalent to the double-standard of the modern, sensitive male needing to have the physical attributes of the sinewy, gritty landscaper. Is there truly a female equivalent to a man’s not being manly enough? I can’t think of one. Not being feminine enough? No, guys love tomboys, and if asked any woman can put on makeup and flattering attire. A woman wearing her man’s clothing has a certain type of sexy chic that takes nothing away from her femininity and if anything enhances it when employed properly. Not being good looking enough and/or thin enough? Not a good example. There are obvious benefits to looking good, whether you’re male or female, and if women are scrutinized the most, at least their investment in their appearance is well amortized across virtually every waking moment of every day. How does it benefit a man to build up the strength, stamina, and calluses necessary to occasionally build a fence or landscape a yard? Who’s going to know he did these jobs, besides his wife? (Yet if he shirks them, he has to face himself.)

Sure, I could brag to my male buddies about how I dug up and fixed a leaking sprinkler system (if I’d actually done this), but how much mileage would I get out of that? The difficulty of the task doesn’t speak for itself. And generally the wiser tack is to avoid discussions of home improvement altogether, lest we end up admitting to something we’d rather not: “Well, actually, we paid a contractor to build the fence. I’m sure I could have done it myself, but being so busy at work and all [unspoken details: driving a desk, typing all day, making phone calls] I just didn’t have time. I did stain it myself though. Yep. Tough job. The stain really didn’t smell very good.” No, better just to field a complement by saying, “Yeah, it’s a good fence,” and then changing the subject. (Perhaps this explains the origin of the strong, silent male.)

Nor is there a female equivalent to the inability of a self-respecting man to gracefully get out of doing a man’s work. The entire notion of “a man’s work” is completely solid and inarguable. Sure, there are tasks formerly thought to be the exclusive realm of the male, that it turns out are equally achievable by a female, like doing math and programming electronic equipment and driving a car in bad weather and barbecuing. And other tasks, such as taking out the garbage, have belonged exclusively to the male for reasons involving, perhaps, the last vestige of chivalry rather than any notion of difficulty. But there are other jobs that simply demand too much strength for a woman to do. It’s obvious to anybody, progressive or not, that the man is the appropriate person to do this work.

The notion of “women’s work,” on the other hand, is a total anachronism. Name a single job that a woman can do that a man truly cannot. There isn’t one. Sure, there are skills that have traditionally been in the women’s domain, like knitting and crocheting and sewing clothing from fabric and patterns, but nobody does that stuff anymore, and no woman would ever have her womanhood challenged by refusing to do them. Lots of women don’t even cook much these days, and they practically boast of it, since it marks them as modern and liberated. (Note that this does not cast doubt on their femininity.)

Worse, if a man gets sore about the home project double standard, the woman doesn’t have to take any blame—she gets to chalk the whole thing up to a man’s hang-up. It’s unbefitting of a male to complain about the difficulty of the work, and in fact can cause big trouble. Envision this scenario: a man—okay, a male adult—does some yard work, and he gets completely pissed off because he has just developed, and in the process lanced, a large blister, and it hurts. He complains bitterly, and there is absolutely no appropriate course of action for his wife to take. If she snidely says, “Oh, poor baby, did you get a little boo-boo?” or “Get a backbone, you pathetic excuse for a man,” the effect is obvious. But if she sweetly coos, “Oh, I’m sorry, let me kiss it and make it feel better,” even if she could do this without a trace of irony, that’s even worse because it makes the husband a child and his wife a mother figure. There is no human social protocol for this scenario other than the man to grimly and silently bear it. Only if he sustains a respectable injury like the loss of a limb is there room for the woman to notice it, freak out, and let the man shrug and say, “It’s nothing.”

By complaining of a blister, the male paints both himself and his mate into a corner socially, and there is no escape. Though we can’t complain about the work itself, at some point the unfairness of the situation begins to grate on us. When I say “unfairness” I’m referring to all the progress men have made toward being more thoughtful spouses, better parents, effective housecleaners, fairer people, and yet how little these things do to relax our duty to take on all the physically strenuous jobs.

If the male decides to point out the double standard, then the female really has him over a barrel. Because she hasn’t said a thing! All she asked was for the job to be done, since she couldn’t do it, so his plaintive response takes on the aspect of some difficult male complex, his internal emotional struggle, the kind of thing that can be summed up as a man talking about his feelings, which is an acceptable thing for the modern male to do under certain circumstances, like when all his manly obligations have been met, but not right after he’s made a big fuss over having to do the kind of work that real men have done cheerfully for millennia, without sustaining even a slight soreness, much less a blister, much less a spoken grievance. No, the abuse comes from within the male himself, so women don’t even have to fess up to it. It’s an invisible button they don’t even have to push.

So what is to be done? I guess we men could maintain the role of sensitive, articulate, well-educated, fair, sweet housekeepers, and loving, doting fathers and husbands, but take careers as day laborers, to build up the strength and stamina and (let’s just say it) manliness required for the occasional home improvement project. But then we wouldn’t make enough money, which is a pity when you’re as educated and articulate and sensible as the modern man has become.

So should the women try to even out the playing field by building up the strength and firmness of flesh to do the jobs themselves? Of course not. They’d be snared in their own ideal of femininity and beauty. No good for them, and besides, no man wants his wife to be tougher and manlier than he is.

So should women relieve their men of all housekeeping and child-rearing duties to give them time to work out and toughen themselves up? Yeah, right—and recreate the wretched state of affairs my generation grew up with, the overburdened career woman/homemaker/mother, but now with both parties resenting the man for the injustice of it? Not a good solution.

Perhaps the only kind thing for women to do is to silently hire somebody to do this work, and let the husband find out only after it’s too late. Then the man can save face by pretending to be annoyed at his wife’s fiscal irresponsibility, saying “Hell, honey, I could’ve done that!” while secretly breathing a sigh of relief. (And the woman can humor him in this bluff.)

If this scenario isn’t practical, or the job is something truly within the husband’s grasp, at least the woman can let the man seem to talk her into letting him try it himself; she can exercise saintly patience while he struggles with it; and she can make sure she never, ever downplays the difficulty of the job, and never shames him into doing it by starting to do it herself. And if he complains—not about the job itself, he would never do that—but about the injustice of this double standard, she can make sure she readily agrees, and acknowledges the absurdity of it. She can concede that males have come too far in our evolution from jerks to be subjected to backbreaking slave labor, that he should be spared this work not because he’s not capable of doing it, but because it’s not interesting enough for his heightened intellect and his advanced appreciation of the higher planes of human existence to which he has ascended. And she can bring him a beer.

Dishwasher Man

oooo
Introduction

For complicated reasons, my kitchen will only accommodate a dishwasher that’s less than 18 inches wide. The first one I bought, an unknown brand nobody will service, broke down after just a year or two. I orderded a new one online, and when it arrived I faced the classic homeowner’s dilemma: do I try to install it myself, or hire somebody who knows what he’s doing? Not a simple question, especially when my masculine dignity hangs in the balance. (“Masculine dignity” is a phrase I’ve borrowed from a pamphlet I got years ago from a couple of door-to-door Jehovah’s Witness types. It has become a handy buzz-phrase around our place.)

Here is the tale of my dishwasher struggle.

Why I should install it myself

Most of our house projects have been done by others: that is, by other men. This has been both a relief and an affront: relief that I didn’t have to exert myself and/or screw anything up, and an affront to my can-do male sensibility. Time and time again, as able-bodied men have carried out our home repairs, I would cross paths with them, invariably while I was carrying a load of laundry or the cat box and a little feces spatula. Or, I'd be doing a load of dishes, watching out the window as the men did some brutal landscaping job like digging a four-foot-deep trench through my backyard for a new drainage system. For socioeconomic reasons, these workers are usually Chicano, and if there’s any truth to the notion that they’re a macho bunch, they must think I’m a real sissy. They’ve all been far too professional to say anything, but I’ve self-applied the sting. I might as well be wearing an apron as they man the rotary saw, cutting the wood for my fence without need of a tape measure, a level, blueprints, or a liberal arts degree.

I doubt these workers admire my ability to bankroll the operation; that’s just as symptom of an unjust world where the bigger earners pilot a desk forty hours a week. In some cases, I wonder if the workmen actually have contempt for me. For example, when had our first dishwasher installed, the guy we hired pulled a fast one on us. There’s this anti-siphon device (the little plug that sticks out of the top of the sink and occasionally spews water), and though he put it in place atop the sink, he didn’t connect it to anything. I guess he figured we’d hassle him if he didn’t install all the accessories that came with the dishwasher, but that I’d never peek under there and notice the ruse. Either that or he just plain forgot to hook it up, which challenges the idea that it’s worth paying an “expert” to do the job.

Besides, how hard could it be to swap out one dishwasher for another very similar one? Why should I wait around while we find somebody to do it, schedule a time, go without a dishwasher until he can come do it, and pay a bunch of money on top of it? Looming over all these considerations is my male pride: I ought to be able to do this kind of thing myself.

Why I should hire an expert

I hate working on house stuff. I’m no slouch with tools, having worked for many years as a bike mechanic, but oddly enough, my experience with bikes makes home repairs particularly unpleasant for me. Bikes are predictable, well-designed, well-machined, and solid. There is generally one right way to install or repair a component, and it’s not hard to figure out what that is. When you screw in a bolt, it goes in smoothly and stops dead when it’s tight. Surfaces of things match, and when you’re done they’re flush. Everything is beautifully made; bearings are silky smooth. Bikes are a true pleasure to work on, especially the high-end racing bikes I deal with.

Homes, meanwhile, are a crazy mishmash of materials, techniques, and eras. They’re built on lumpy and/or hilly terrain that is only more or less solid. At least in my neighborhood, almost no two houses are alike. They’re worked on, over the decades, by a variety of crews with highly variable abilities and ethics. My house particularly is a kludge; built in 1929, it’s been the recipient of an unholy combination of neglect and really shoddy so-called upgrades. When I try to do the simplest thing to it, I frequently run into annoying problems. Like, I try to put a nail into the wall to hang a picture, and a crack runs across the painted plaster wall. Or I’ve missed the stud and the nail just makes a useless hole in the plaster. Or the nail goes in a quarter inch and hits some incredibly hard thing and will go no farther. And hanging a picture is probably the simplest home improvement task there is!

I also have great respect for professionals, and pity for the hapless amateur who boogers things up completely. So many times as a bike mechanic I’d inherit what could have been a simple repair had the bike’s owner not tried to do it himself. You get a partially disassembled bike and a big bag of parts, not all of which have any place on the bike to even go. (One time there was a spark plug among the detritus, as though the guy had just scooped up everything from the garage floor.) It’s bad enough to screw up a bike, but what if I made a plumbing or electrical error? I could burn my house down, or cause a massive unseen water leak that could dissolve a wall or, unbeknownst to me, soak my mudsill and attract termites.

What men do for inspiration

When I’m on the fence about whether or not to take something on, I get some advice—not from an expert, who would of course tell me to hire an expert, such as himself—but from any friend or family member who surpasses me in do-it-yourself capability. There’s a small chance this person will tell me, “Dude, you really don’t want to try that yourself,” but more likely he’ll give me encouragement and pointers. Make no mistake about it, though: you don’t ask for help unless you’re pretty sure you’ll take on the challenge. Otherwise, you’re setting yourself up to lose face in front of another male. Not a pretty sight.

I started with my brother Bryan. Fortunately for posterity, I hit him up on instant messaging, so the transcript is available for your delectation. (I’ve edited it here to weed out the side diversions that, while amusing to me, are beside the point. Also, instant messages have a way of getting out of phase, like ships crossing in the night, so I’ve rearranged things a bit.)

DA: Have you ever installed a dishwasher?
BA: No, I have not. I have worked one over pretty good, though. I reckon it’s not that hard, especially if you've already got one installed. It’s like heart surgery, only easier. Plug-n-play, baby.
DA: What if the hoses aren’t the same diameter or something?
BA: [It’s] just tubing, you know. You hook one end from the dishwasher to the thingy, and the other end of the thingy to the drain hose. You might need couplings and things, too. You can get all that junk at McGuckins the next time you're in Boulder. Maybe it even comes with your new machine.
DA: I figure if it’s an hour project with no trips to the hardware store, I'm as sound as a pound. But other than that, I'm feeling like a wuss.
BA: Like a wuss—because you're sick, or scared, or what?

This is where the conversation gets interesting. Male support is, I think, a lot different from female support. Women listen, uphold, and empathize. Men apply subtle, but powerful, pressure. By questioning your manhood, they bring out your stronger self, just like the Army. Witness:

DA: I’m scared.
BA: Just think of how impressed Erin will be with your manhood should you succeed.
DA: Right, but think of how much face I could lose if I fail!
BA: True story, I'm scared, too. Sometimes I'm scared to go home, for fear of what damage awaits me.
DA: [provides web link to 28-page installation instructions for the dishwasher in question]
BA: Man, with instructions like those, you can't go wrong! Just don't let the wife see them, or she’ll figure she can do it!
DA: Funny you should say that. I was just showing her the instructions as Exhibit A in my defense should I elect not to try this at home. “Cripes, woman, it’s 28 pages and you need a 90-degree elbow with 3/8” N.P.T. external threads, and copper tubing, and it has stuff like toekick and leveling legs!”
BA: Are you kidding? If you give up now, she'll know you're a wuss! Just hand those instructions to Alexa [my eight-year-old daughter] and she could do it!
DA: You're not making it any easier for me to wuss out, you know. “Do not solder within 6 inches (15.2 cm) from water inlet valve.” Like I know how to solder! Like I have a soldering iron!
BA: You don't have to solder! You’d use a torch, anyway. Now there’s a man’s tool. (I haven’t actually done it, but Dad has.)

With that last bit you can really appreciate Bryan’s masterful skill in applying pressure. His phrase “a man’s tool,” drawing an implicit contrast between me and a man (subtext: I am not a man!) flows perfectly into his invocation of our dad. Dad … now there’s a guy who would never, never shy away from a project like this. Check it out: even as a teenager he would boldly tear apart the engine of his VW beetle.


My dad is capable of fixing any household appliance in existence (whether or not he gets around to it promptly). One time he suspected that a hot water heater was on its last legs, and engineered a solution whereby a puddle on the floor would be detected and would trigger a solenoid that would drop some weight attached to a cord or cable that would crank closed the water supply, preventing the house from flooding. I’m not sure I’m describing this correctly, or that I have ever even understood the thing correctly, but you get the idea. My dad is a man’s man, who has tools and knows how to use them. Bryan’s simple words here meet the legal definition of entrapment, I think.

BA: But you've already got the water supply and the drain hose, so you're golden.
DA: IF they're compatible. WHICH I doubt. Our old one was a complete and total pile. A steaming load.
BA: Dude, I'm confident that you can do it. [Subtext: don’t let me down!] It’s just a couple of pipes.
DA: Come on! It's got a Waste Tee and these curvy drain traps....
BA: All that stuff's already there! Alls you have to do is unhook the old drain hose and hook the new one in its place. (Of course, you should be a man about it and hook up the air gap while you’re in there.) Just don’t electrocute yourself. I always give the kids a refresher course on what to do if you see someone being electrocuted before I do a project. More for shock value, and so that they’re duly impressed with my manhood, than anything else.

At this point, the phone rang. It was a colleague, with whom I’d separately been having a brief chat on the same topic. Guys are great. If you ask them about their health or their families you may get a few words, a cursory response. But throw out any sentence beginning with “Ever installed a…” and you’re almost guaranteed a passionate and detailed discussion. Throw in actual hardware, especially a car, and you enjoy practically unlimited use of their time and energy.

My colleague asked a number of questions about the plumbing, the old dishwasher, the new one, and so forth. We talked for about fifteen minutes, and eventually he concluded that I could probably do the job myself, though he advised me to have at least three inches of butt crack showing above my jeans.

At this point, two men—both more capable than I—had expressed confidence in me, and had thus applied the proper motivation. I was now determined to take on the project. I returned to my chat with Bryan, to give him the news.

DA: I’m goin’ in!
BA: Dude, good luck! We’re all counting on you! [An allusion to the disaster movie “Airplane,” of course.]
DA: What about “You fool! You’ll be killed!” [Bryan has missed an opportunity to play out a standard Albert set piece.]
BA: D’oh.
BA: Don’t do it, you fool!
DA: I must do this … alone!
BA: (What was I thinking?)
DA: (Yeah, no kidding.)
BA: You might want to put on some baggy jeans for full effect. (So they’re... shoot, what do the kids call it? Ah, “sagging.”) You'll be The Man if you pull this one off. [This comment, of course, shows the disingenuous nature of Bryan’s earlier assertions that this job would be really easy.]
BA: Let me know how that turns out!
DA: We shall see!
BA: Go get ‘em, tiger! Woot woot! OH, and don't forget to disconnect the power first! Worse case it doesn't have a plug, just wires, but you can just skin them and shove them in the holes. Huh huh, no. You'd have to buy a plug.
DA: Surely they would provide a plug…
BA: Man, if that’s your nightmare, you're doing okay.

How women inspire their men

Erin was astounded that I’d decided to install the dishwasher myself. Earlier she’d made a pretty airtight case for outsourcing: “Look, you don’t have all the parts on that list, and you don’t have all the tools, and you’ve never dealt with plumbing. We could call Galvin Appliance—they’ve got a guy we could hire to do it, even though we didn’t buy it there. In this economy he’d probably really appreciate the work.” This argument was convincing, even glib—an underhanded attack, perhaps, on my masculine dignity? And now, her disbelief that I was up to the challenge—bordering on prohibiting me outright from taking it on—further steeled my resolve. She had upped the ante. Failing in the task and then having to admit I was wrong … that would just be adding insult to injury. Besides, her lack of faith had slightly wounded my male ego. I had to turn that around.

How children inspire their dads

My kids had by this point spotted the huge box the dishwasher came in, and I think Erin had told them they’d have to wait before playing with it. But once they caught wind that I was installing the dishwasher right now, they cheered and danced around. They shadowed Erin and me closely as, almost tripping over them, we dragged the dishwasher into the kitchen. Alexa even said, “I’m so excited you’re going to do it, so we can watch!” If I turned back now, I’d have two very disappointed daughters. Fortunately, the box was more interesting than my struggles, so they weren’t in my way as I tackled the task.

The job itself

Before I began work, Erin urged me to print out the directions I’d found on the web. I refused. After all, many of the pages were describing how to prep the area under the counter; how to make sure the dishwasher would fit; how to move it without throwing out my back (fortunately, my back was already out, so I didn’t have to worry about that); how to splice wires together (I was sure this was for some nonstandard implementation, like if your house didn’t have a nearby electrical outlet), etc. There really were soldering guidelines, which I was certain wouldn’t apply. It just seemed like a waste of paper and ink to print that whole thing out; I would have it on the PC for reference. (At the end of the job I realized that—duh!—a paper copy of the instructions was provided with the dishwasher. In the event, I never did look at them, being, after all, a guy.)

I set about methodically photographing the existing setup before dismantling it. That part was pretty easy. I even thought to put a tub down to catch the spills.

From there it seemed a simple matter of finding the corresponding hoses and parts supplied with the new dishwasher. But wherever I looked, I found nothing. No supply line. No obvious place to hook up a supply line. No cord. It was crazy. Finally I unscrewed and removed the toekick plate, to see if the missing components were hiding underneath, like the bag of small organs the butcher puts inside a chicken or turkey. Still nothing … except a little stub were you would attach, say, a 90-degree elbow with 3/8” N.P.T. external threads. If you had one.

I looked into the old dishwasher to see what I could scavenge. I found a corresponding stub, connected via (eureka!) a 90-degree elbow to the supply line. So far, so good in avoiding a trip to the hardware store.

Next to this elbow on the old dishwasher was a little metal box that looked like it might have something to do with power. I removed a screw or two and took off the box, and found three wires coming out. Bryan hadn’t just been trying to scare me: these damn dishwashers don’t come with a cord!

How much money do you suppose the manufacturers save by not bothering to provide a cord? That is, how much would the Chinese kid or the robot get for doing a little assembly-line wiring? I couldn’t imagine, at first, why they’d skimp on this, and then it dawned on me: they can save fifty cents here and their customers will never know or care, because the cost of overcoming this hurdle will be buried in the price charged by whoever installs the dishwasher. Even if the consumer chafes at the expense of this labor, the manufacturer has already gotten their money and couldn’t care less. In a way, though, I felt reassured by this: for the company to nickel-and-dime me like this, their margins must be pretty slim; in other words, I probably got a pretty good deal.

I wasn’t happy about the idea of doing any wiring myself. After all, these wires would be near water, so there’s an electrocution risk, and any time you have live wires there’s a fire risk, and then there’s the less glamorous but equally dreadful prospect that no power would go to the thing at all, after all my work. But I was encouraged by an e-mail I’d gotten from a friend in response to my 2009 Holiday Newsletter, about my retail experience in London. She commiserated, citing a trip to London she took in 1980. She hadn’t realized her hair dryer wouldn’t work over there, and had to go out and buy a UK-compatible one. She got it home only to find it had no plug. Her British husband sheepishly told her that you had to buy that separately, at a hardware store, and wire it yourself. Now, if an entire nation had managed to put up with such nonsense, I thought, surely I can adopt the same chin-up attitude and push on with my task. Keep calm and carry on.

I phoned Bryan and consulted with him. “There’s a green wire,” I said, “which I guess is the ground, and a black, and a white. The cord from the old dishwasher has a green wire and two white. I guess the two white are interchangeable, right?”

“Oh, no!” Bryan replied. “Only one of those is live. You need to figure out which one it is.” I looked more closely. One of the cord wires had a ribbed plastic casing; the other was smoother. I looked at the photo I’d taken of the old wiring; ribbed plastic was evidently the equivalent of black. Glad I asked! Here is my handiwork:

Other than that, it really wasn’t that hard a job. Messing with the wires, and moving the elbow joint and supply line from the old dishwasher to the new one, were hassles because they’re all just inches from the floor, so I was sprawled out there a good while, my face occasionally bumping into a screwdriver. It also wasn’t pleasant having the old dishwasher drool on me periodically, or rolling over on a puddle or wet towel. I had to cut off part of the drain hose, which had a triple-diameter aperture to fit different junctions. (I confess, I’m trying to make this sound as complicated as possible.)

Getting the dishwasher to fit in the cavern below the counter was straightforward but really tedious. Lest I fall prey to what we English majors call the imitative fallacy, I’ll spare you the details. When I was done I was delighted to find wood beneath the counter to screw the dishwasher’s frame into. And then I was pretty much done!

At least, it appeared I was done. I was really wondering whether the thing would actually work. Would it get any juice from my home-wired cord? Would a hose burst and flood my kitchen? Would the dishwasher prove defective, now that my kids had dismantled the box and all the packing materials? Would some dire plumbing mistake cause raw sewage to spew up from the sink? Would some combination of problems cause the floor of my home to become electrified and kill us all?

Before I could test the new dishwasher, of course, I had to load it, and that meant generating dishes. Here’s where my family could help: we’re all great at this. In fact, my must-act-now project had delayed dinner significantly, and I was more than ready to chow down on some good blue-collar food:

Then I loaded up the new dishwasher and ran it. It seemed to take forever, only (I’m sure) because I was on pins and needles. It made the normal mild groaning and moaning noises that dishwashers make, accompanied by light swishing sounds and occasionally punctuated by a slurping gurgle in the sink. It was still toiling away when, exhausted, I went to bed. The next morning, I was greeted by a full load of sparkly clean dishes. O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! I chortled in my joy.