When we turned it on, we could hear the garbage disposal wanting to work but it never did anything.
We tried resetting it, looking for something jammed, and using the old broom handle trick. No dice.
We eventually resigned ourselves to buying a new one... Which we did... A few months ago from Home Depot...
After looking at the installation instructions, I told Mr. that we could do it ourselves if the electric was similar.
This was about two months ago.
So two weeks ago, we finally decided to get our hands dirty.
We cut the power, disconnected the old disposal from the pipe, and then Mr. spent a decent amount of time trying to detach it from our sink. Finally success!
We flipped the garbage disposal over and I may have punched the air because the electrical hook-up was exactly the same as on the new one. We are both college graduates so I had faith that we could connect a few wires. Easy Peasy.
Nope.
When Mr. pulled the wires out of the old disposal, they looked like this:
Sigh.
These did not look good. But, should we change them out? Should we leave them? I leaned towards switching them out. I told Mr. if they connect straight into the junction box (sometimes I throw out handyman terms I learned from Google searching), we could just go to HD, buy some new wire, switch it out.
Mr. threw a bit of a tantrum about why nothing was ever easy in response.
Still unsure what to do, we went to The Dads.
I sent pictures of the wires to my dad. His verdict: They don’t look good and "You should be able to change them yourself. You have to learn how to do these things sometime". (I think Mr. was ready to disown my dad over this comment because during the duration of the install I kept saying "Well, we have to learn sometime.")
Mr. called his dad and his opinion: Switch them out.
Damn.
We were hoping they (or maybe just one of them) would say, "Eh they are fine. Just attach it." Boo!
Needless to say, the garbage disposal installation was put on hold until last weekend when we could run to the Depot. (We don't go through the effort of actually driving anywhere after 3 on Sundays.)
We didn’t want an open pipe under our sink for a week so I asked someone to measure it so that we could buy a cap at the hardware store by our house (walkable).
Someone mismeasured. The cap was too big (and we weren't going back out for a second one) and so for one week, under our sink looked like this:
Water leaked into the bucket fairly consistently and it didn’t smell good either.
Fast forward to a week ago Saturday.
We disconnected the old wires, brought them to HD, had them cut us some new wire, bought some (wrong-sized) wire cutters, and even some new wire nuts (after verifying with the guy that they were the right ones for our job).
We ran the wires where only a minor set back occurred trying to twist them together. I created a tool using duct tape, pliers and my fingers to twist them.
The rest of the installation we left until Sunday.
I left Mr. alone for most of the installation (the better to preserve our marriage). Occasionally, he called me for some input but he managed to successfully install the wires. Yeah!
Then we just had to attach it to the sink. Done!
And do the plumbing. Also done!
So standing back and ready to get the fire extinguisher, Mr. turned on the power and we gave it a go. It seemed like it worked. YEAH!!!!!
Due to the fact, we know how our fixes usually go, we left the bucket under the sink just in case.
Good thing.
I was doing dishes as a favor to Mr. (who probably went back and redid them because they weren’t cleaned to his standards) and I heard water gushing. Two pipes had detached. Oops. We fixed them again and they were OK for most of the week.
On a high from our home improvement abilities, we were just getting the hubris to remove the bucket from under the sink when, Thursday night as Mr. was doing the dishes and I was snoozing on the couch downstairs, a large bang resounded throughout our house.
I jumped off the couch and yelled up to Mr. what was the matter?
No response.
So I overcame my laziness and walked upstairs to discover Mr. on the floor with the cabinet doors open.
Me: What happened?!!
Him: The garbage disposal fell off!!!!
AHHHHH!
Yes, folks, our garbage disposal finagled its way off the mounting ring and came crashing down into our cabinet spilling water everywhere. Mr. had the faucet on when it fell so you can imagine the flood that ensured. I think I saw Noah sail by.
Side note: When we originally turned on the GD, we noticed how it seemed to vibrate a lot but we thought it was like "quiet feature" to keep all the noise down. We were wrong.
Because it was 9:30 at night, Mr. and I tried to figure out what went wrong in as quick a fashion as possible. Turns out we didn't push the ring attachment thing all the way to where it should have been. Oops.
I blame Mr. for this because the instructions clearly state to turn this thing until it locks. He knows I do not read instructions so I can't take the blame for not realizing this.
Either way, we managed to reattach (we are hoping in the correct way) our garbage disposal, clean up the flood, change our clothes which we were now wet with pipe mess, and I went back to the couch while Mr. went back to the dishes.
The bucket is now back under the pipes and the garbage disposal seems like it is working OK.
We are planning to check the attachment thing for the next few days to make sure it is locked this time.
We have decided that we should not be allowed to fix things in our house.
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