Robot Servants

Our washing machine had been having trouble for a while. It would become unbalanced often and the only way to get it to finish a cycle was to lean or sit on it. I've spent quite a bit of time in the last year leaning on a very shaky washing machine. Bryan and I took advantage of President's Day sales and bought a new washer and dryer. It took several weeks for them to be delivered, but that day finally came last Friday. Bryan, having read unfavorable reviews about third party delivery and installation people with whom Costco contracts, opted to just have the old machines hauled away and the new machines deposited in the garage.

I wasn't home when the swap took place. I came back to see all the socks and gloves and other small clothing items that had been trapped under the old machines. I got to work cleaning the space with the intent that Bryan would install the new machines that night. Except then I saw how much that room needed to be painted. And I had leftover paint from the bathroom across the hall.

And that's how I ended up spending my Friday afternoon painting the laundry room. And some of my Saturday.

You can't really tell the difference, but this is after I painted. I can tell though, especially in person.

This is as far as I could paint on this wall, which makes it a little easier to see the contrast of the old (right) and new (left) paint. The other half of our laundry room is a pantry and I didn't want to rehouse the food and shelves while the laundry paraphernalia was taking up space in random parts of the downstairs. It would have been too chaotic. Instead I painted as far as I could and intend to paint the other half someday. Probably not any time soon.

I had done a pretty good job of cleaning up when I had to pause for the evening. That included wrapping my paint brush in plastic wrap so I could keep using it the next day. I painted more on Saturday but had to stop for a bit to work on something else, so the brush went back in the plastic wrap. I was not pleased when I found my brush later in the day, out of its wrap. Topher admitted he had gotten it out. What I didn't notice until the next day was that Topher had tried his hand at painting as well. So, now I get to paint the door.

After three days of painting, replacing all the switches and outlets in the room (Bryan), and a ridiculous number of trips to Home Depot (also Bryan), the new washer and dryer were installed. Bryan spent many hours working on this and Peter was his assistant when it came time to carry them inside. They're beautiful and our clothes feel and smell cleaner.

Of course, we did discover that when the washer spins on high it literally makes the entire house buzz. So instead of only rattling when leaning on the old washer, now we can rattle anywhere in the house, at least for the last ten minutes of the cycle.

We were not expecting that.

As long as we remember to turn down the spin cycle it's fine.