What home repairs are you working on?

My wife broke down and bought a new dishwasher as ours was quite old and loud. She sprung for a Bosch and the thing is ultra quiet. With rebates and price matching, she paid 500 bones for a model one step down from the top one. I give it a tentative two thumbs up.......reliability down the road my affect my rating.

Bosch is good. I think it's Consumer Reports' favourite. I'm pretty sure that's what i bought a few years back and it's still great.

My in-laws bought a Bosch dishwasher when they remodeled their kitchen a couple of years ago and they love it. Bosch is usually at the upper end of reliability.

My Bosch dishwasher is loud as hell and takes 90+ minutes to do a load of dishes. Word is the new ones take twice as long and are designed to last five years.

I want a commercial one that fits in the slot and finishes in 20 minutes.

A lot of unhappy Bosch customers here:

www.consumeraffairs.com/homeowners/bosch.html?page=3

Shellhead wrote: A lot of unhappy Bosch customers here:

www.consumeraffairs.com/homeowners/bosch.html?page=3

Except their rating is still higher than Frigidaire, Samsung, LG, and GE according to that site. Whirlpool/Amana is higher rated than Bosch according to their reviews though pretty much everything is under 3 stars.

My Bosch takes 2.5 hours to get through a load (i set it to Sanitize just for fun), and it's loud, but it's quieter than my last dishwasher.

Also it has speed settings (i THINK i can do a 40 minute cycle? 30-45 minutes maybe?) and it has a quiet setting too i think.

I think Bosch easily had best value (bang for your buck).

SuperflyTNT wrote: I would rather cut my own balls off than pay a contractor to do a remodel again.

I grew up with a stepdad as a contractor, so I am fairly aware of all the shadiness (and am comfortable doing most things, but I don't have equipment for custom cabinets). Our general contractor is superb. And our cabinet guy is really good -- just a stereotypical creative type that gets a bit lost in the cabinet making. Overall, for remodels and knowing what it could be, I rate this a 9/10.

As for Dishwashers, we have a Kitchen Aid -- the thing is basically silent.

I have a Frigidaire. I hate its existence. It runs quiet enough, only takes 2-2.5 hours for a heavy full load, and gets everything clean. However, god forbid you accidentally place any dishes out of the optimal arrangement because then it just goes "screw you, I will leave everything dirty and then cover it with soap scum." The previous house also had a Frigidaire and it had the exact same preference for a specific arrangement of dishes.

barrowdown wrote: I have a Frigidaire. I hate its existence. It runs quiet enough, only takes 2-2.5 hours for a heavy full load, and gets everything clean. However, god forbid you accidentally place any dishes out of the optimal arrangement because then it just goes "screw you, I will leave everything dirty and then cover it with soap scum." The previous house also had a Frigidaire and it had the exact same preference for a specific arrangement of dishes.

I think we have a Whirlpool. I use Lemi shine because our water is hard, and run vinegar through it on occasion. I also end up doing a lot prewashing. Like I think the dishwasher has slowly been training me to prep the dishes more. There's a feedback cycle, where if they come out dirty I'll scrub more the next time around. Also, I recently discovered if I put in one of those little dish pods and my hands are wet, it will stick to the soap chamber and not distribute properly. If the dishes have sat for a day I will run it on Heavy Duty and Extra Hot and that will take care of most problems.

my next problem

Our basement shower is a fiberglass stall with tiny tiles. It is leaking. Rather than rip it out and replace it for $3,000, and instead of adding gallons of caulk, we are thinking of putting in a new pan and seeing if that helps. Can you just drop one on top and caulk it, or do I have to do some actual work?

32.5 x 37 3/4" is the approximate size of the pan.

According to This Old House, doing it the Right Way is a huge headache.

What do you mean by tiny tiles? On the floor of the shower, or the walls? Is the shower pan fiberglass as well? I can’t really picture what you described.

Also, a fiberglass surround is going to overlap the pan, so you wont be able to get the pan out without taking the walls out.

Disclaimer: my experience is mostly with the closed-cell foam shower pans. We rarely install fiberglass ones, and never concrete.

The floor is one inch tiles and the walls are fiberglass. It leaks into the adjoining laundry room.

Space Ghost wrote:

SuperflyTNT wrote: I would rather cut my own balls off than pay a contractor to do a remodel again.

I grew up with a stepdad as a contractor, so I am fairly aware of all the shadiness (and am comfortable doing most things, but I don't have equipment for custom cabinets). Our general contractor is superb. And our cabinet guy is really good -- just a stereotypical creative type that gets a bit lost in the cabinet making. Overall, for remodels and knowing what it could be, I rate this a 9/10.

As for Dishwashers, we have a Kitchen Aid -- the thing is basically silent.

Oh, it’s not the shadiness or anything although that is certainly prevalent. I’d rather do it myself because the average for going with a contractor is 2x material cost for a finished product. So, if materials cost 10,000, you’re going to pay 10,000 in labor.

I’d rather take 2 weeks off work and do it myself, and spend that 10,000 on my kids’ college fund, my retirement, or more realistically, another project the wife wants done

Goddamn dishwashers.

Mine decided to start shedding parts inside it on Thursday. I'm traveling all next week, so I told my wife "find what you want in stock somewhere, and I'll put it in before I leave."

She comes home with a dishwasher, and I start to look at installing it, but the shutoff valve is stuck. Fuck. It's pretty dubious looking, and for some reason I can't understand it has the sink hot split in a Y off the dishwasher line (and what should be the sink hot is unused... and the dishwasher hot is on the wrong side of the cabinet...). Lots of opportunities for this to ruin my life really fast.

Anyway, whatever. I go have beers with a friend assuming nothing good will come of tearing into it on a Friday night.

Today I call a Saturday plumber, and he gives me a price that motivates me to go fix it myself. So it's off with the house water, turn down the water heater, and start digging. Discover my house shutoff valve is only about 98% effective, so I assemble the dishwasher with the line stuck in a bucket until I need it.

Eventually, all is well, and I'm not out an extra 500 bucks to a plumber. I still need to deal with that shutoff valve someday, but I can do that on my terms, without a hard deadline.

What a pain in the ass.

Oh, we bought a Bosch. It's really quiet, but doesn't seem to dry worth a shit so far. The old one was a Whirlpool, ~14 years old, original to the house.

Yeah my Bosch doesn’t dry that well either. I use that rinse aid stuff, maybe it helps