The washer blew up.

Since I am done fixing trees in the backyard, its time for things to start breaking inside the house.

The other day while SWMBO and I were lying in bed the sound from our washing machine switched from "whump-whump-whump" to "CLANG-CLANG-RATTLE-BANG-BANG" and it sounded like something not good was happening.

SWMBO mentioned that it had made that noise once before.

I descended to the laundry room and looked at the washer. It was moving like a hula-girl on a trucker's dashboard (Note to self: get hula girl for the Thunder-Buggy, that would add to its tacky coolness). The bounces weren't too high of the floor though, and the clothes were getting clean. I looked through the glass door and saw that the drum was spinning a few inches out of concentricity.

Today I called the local appliance place and they suggested a repair would likely be in the order of $400. A used washer could be had for less. With 4 adults and 2 kids in the house, i don't have much time to negotiate. I said I'd bring in our washer tonight to get an opinion on its condition.

All of this meant that at lunch I found myself crawling under the laundry sink trying to turn off the water supply to the washer. I hate the guy who put those valves in. It is impossible to reach the valves, and even harder to turn them on/off. In the end I found myself standing in the laundry room dripping while a geyser of water washed down the walls and floor around me. A quick run to the basement and I had the water supply shut off for the house. Tonight I'll be putting some ball valves in, I think.

The washer is now sitting beside the house waiting to be loaded up and taken to the appliance repair place downtown. Here's hoping we can get doing laundry again without a lot of delay.