The Washing Machine

This is slowly becoming a blog about home improvement projects!

Last night I rushed home, fed the kids, and excitedly ripped into a package sitting by the front door. It was like Christmas Eve in February! Except instead of some fun toy, it held a new lid switch for our dated Kenmore washing machine. Oh the joy!

I'm not a washing machine genius. I skipped "washing machine maintenance and repair" in seminary while wasting time on unimportant subjects like "the eschatological implications of the word it in john 6:54". I realize now that was a mistake. Being able to translate most of the Old Testament doesn't mean squat when you don't have any clean jeans.

I had one pair of jeans that I had wore most of the week. The rest were soaking in the disgusting water of our washing machine which would neither spin nor drain. Not good. My jeans collection -- both the pair I had been wearing and the pairs in the stagnant pool that was our washer -- were rank with vile and foul odors.

Google, though, loves me anyway. I searched for "lid switch replacement Kenmore washer 110.23456392" found an easy tutorial, grabbed my screw gun and marched determined into the laundry room. Believe it or not, to repair the lid switch you don't actually have to do anything with the lid. Instead, you have to carefully remove the entire cover off the washing machine so you can access a very important electrical connection and ground screw.

One sliced pinky later, the cover was removed, the old lid switch extracted, the new one installed, and the cover back into position. Working time? Less than 30 minutes. WOOT! (What does that even mean?)

I drained the washer (which I'm sure constitued an environmental hazard by itself), ran it back to the beginning of the cyle and waited for the magic....

And waited...

And waited some more...

I jiggled knobs. I tested the different cycles. It would fill and agitate, just as it has always done, but never advance to the spin or drain cycles.

Maybe it just needs more time, Jessica and I agree.

We wait.

We listen.

We grow annoyed.

Finally, an unbearable 20 minutes later (it felt like 3 hours!), I grabbed my screw gun again and was determined to either make that washing machine work or destroy it utterly while trying! Jessica suggested that we pray about it first. I agree. We pray, somewhat angrily, and I attack.

You know what happened? A miracle!

Cover removed. Console extracted. Lid switch exposed again. Pinky still bleeding. At some point in the process the electrical connection between the old washer and the new lid switch had come loose and it was just hanging there, with a malicious, mocking smile spread across its evil plastic face.

I put everything back together, reset it all, and Jessica and I rejoiced as the washer immediately drained and started spinning. WOOT WOOT!

What's the miracle? If you had smelled the one pair of jeans I had been wearing this week you would know!