Just a simple old woman with no brain...

I bought a new dryer a few weeks ago, and it came in on Wednesday. I mentioned to Bob that I would like to pick it up on Thursday. (I have to plug into his schedule!) I waited and waited and finally about 230 he shows up. We went in to the Base to load up the dryer, and bring it home. We pulled into the driveway and he said he would off load it into the garage and be back sometime later to hook it up.

NAH NAH says I. Please just set it in the Living room, and I will get the pigtail hooked up. So he brought it in, plopped it right in front of the couch and left for his 5:00 appointment with a beer at the Local Watering hole. He will be 70 next week, and NOTHING stands in the way of his routine.)

I looked at it, and looked at the laundry room (really a wide hall between the living room and the back yard.) and thought....HMMMMMM I can do this. I pulled out the out dryer, unhooked the wiring, and then tried to get it out the back door onto the deck.

It was like a chinese puzzle! this has to move here in order for me to go there, in order to get this over there! Like I said WIDE HALL. just wide enough for for the door and the appliances. Nothing else. and If you dont have it set just right, the door wont close.

After realizing that the dryer would not go through the door unless I took the door knob off, I had to move everything back to square one, to go get the screw gun and bits. Got the door knob off, got the dryer to the deck and then put the knob back on.

Step one done! Now I opened the cardboard box that the dryer was in, got the dryer turned around and went to open the flange that covered the wiring screws. OOPS, the one socket that fits that particular screw, was missing. Off I went to hunt down a pair of pliers. Found one but it was rusted shut. So off I go again looking for the WD-40. Finally got the pliers working and the screw off, got the flange off and hooked up the pigtail from the old dryer unto the new dryer. (Now WHY don't the manufacturers put real plugs on their merchandise?) Then I sat and rested, because my back was starting to spasm. I sat there and looked at it sitting there in my living room and thought, I can do this. So I tried to push the new dryer over the carpet...Nope! So I moved the couch, pulled back the rug and then realized that the really heavy display case that I rescued from the demolition bin at a place I worked, needed to be moved, so that I could fit the dryer through the door into the utility room.

That damned near killed me! But I got that done. Then I pushed the dryer into place. OOPS....gotta put the vent ducting on and plug it in, SO back out it comes, and then I crawled behind it. ( no easy task with a bad back and a giant stomach!)
GOt it hooked up, sorta, and got out, and then pushed everything back into place and turned it on. VOILA!! Step two done

I went out back to see if airflow was coming through the vent to the outside, and it was not. I got a flash light and looked up in there to see it was jammed full of lint and fuzz and more than likely RATS!! I thought the sense was the better choice and left it for Bob. After all he can move a lot faster if there should be something alive in there.

The dryer does not have much clearance between the wall and the vent pipe, and If I did not get it set just right, either the vent would kink up and not blow outside, or I would not be able to get the door shut. I Waited for Bob.

Late yesterday he called and said I am planning on coming over to hook up your dryer does that work? I said it works fine. :) he came over and was shocked that I actually could do something. (after all I have been doing for myself all my life)
I handed him a long wire clothes hanger and took him outside and told him what was left to do. Nothing alive or dead for that matter was in there but it was 6 feet of solid lint and mud! No wonder the old dryer quit!

So to make sure that the vent worked right, he unhooked the dryer and crawled back ther to see how far up the duct the clog went. We got a big sack fuyll of junk out of ther and then said he had to go to ace hardware in oak harbor for some tape and some clamps. I KNEW if he left, it would not be hooked back up until later in the week, so I said WAIT!! and pulled out a package of clamps from the kitchen junk drawer. He gave me one of those looks...You ruined my plans...teehee. He got the dryer hooked Back up and pushed sort of in place and then said he would see me later.

Step three will be to get him to actualy wiggle the dryer back far enough to shut the door and be straight with the washer. That one make take a few years. I now have a dryer again, and the vent is cleaned out and all the clothes are dry and my house no longer looks like a chinese laundry!

Mission accomplished, and once again, I am a simple old woman with no brain. At least that is what he thinks!