We Did It! Washing Machine Edition

About a week and a half ago our cheap little washing machine started making an alarming grindy noise when it was draining, and then the day before Blake left on business it decided it wasn't going to drain at all; the clothes were left to wallow in a puddle of soapy water at the end of the load.

There's a drain outlet with a filter on the front of the machine which catches little bits of crap you've left in your pockets, fluff and soapy slime; we opened that and a whole wash-load of water flooded out. Fortunately the washer lives in our unfinished basement right by a drain, so the water found a good home without destroying anything on the way. The filter had caught a whole lot of safety pins, beads and bobby pins (damn you, ballet); I guess they mean it when they say you have to clear it out every month.

I did some Googling and found some suggestions, some helpful and some not so helpful. From our information, we deduced that the problem was somewhere in the pump and drain system (we're brilliant).

So we headed downstairs and starting taking the thing apart; we removed the back panel, disconnected all the bits of drain pipe we could make sense of, and failed to find any obvious blockages or other visible problems. That left the pump, which looked okay, but then that's the nature of pumps. Having eliminated everything else, we ordered a new pump.

It arrived a couple of days later (I love PartSelect) but Blake was away and I didn't fancy trying to screw the pump to the bottom of the machine without someone to hold it up. So I waited until he got home, and we installed the new pump today. It was tricky and a bit annoying, but not spend-my-debt-paying-money-for-someone-else-to-do-it tricky.

And guess what? It works! The machine is purring happily away, draining like never before, and Blake and I are full of the smug satisfaction that comes from fixing something yourself instead of being suckers and paying someone to unscrew some screws and disconnect some hoses.

The next thing, of course, is to fix the stove...