The Beast and The POS

Getting the washer {AKA The Beast} and dryer hooked up in our house SUCKED. There was no easy way to do it, and there's no way it would have happened without Kyle. Kyle is an amazing guy who works with Vince at the bike shop, and we both love hanging out with him. He volunteered {or maybe Vince kindly volunteered him} to unload the machines from the truck and bring them inside.

When The Beast was in the house, I started reading the set-up directions, and promptly told The Men to take off the shipping bolts in the back and replace them with plastic pegs. They mistook that as me saying, "Blah blah blah extra work blah blah doesn't know what she's talking about blah blah." When they were getting ready to put the washer in the laundry room I asked again if they had taken the shipping bolts off and The Men said, "Yes," so we continued with the directions. Why would I doubt two intoxicated men who just wanted to get this over with?

After struggling to get the machines into the house, we all realized that the laundry room door is small. As in, smaller than the washer and dryer. I felt like crying at that point. I told Kyle to measure the doorway though because it was so close to fitting through. It turns out that the top of the doorway is slightly wider then the bottom, meaning they had to lift the machines all the way to the top of the doorway. The Beast was heavy enough that they had a problem just carrying it, let alone lifting it above their waists. Luckily, they are both strong guys and managed to squeeze it in the door.

They managed to squeeze the dryer in as well and stacked it on The Beast, though it wasn't as hard because it was significantly less weight that the washer. We let Kyle go home at this point, because there was no more heavy lifting involved, and ya know, that's all we wanted him for. He also sliced his palm open on the bottom of the dryer and I figured he wanted to take care of that.

At this point, I mentioned to Vince that we should put the stacker kit on {the thing that keeps the dryer from dancing off the washer and ruining my life}, before we hooked everything up. I handed the pieces to Vince and he insisted that they didn't fit. I believed him because once again, why would I doubt an intoxicated man who just wanted to get this over with? I told him to just forget bout it, and hopefully the dryer wouldn't fall. Let's move on.

Because I was the only one that could fit between the machines and the water heater, I had to hook everything up. I started by plugging in The Beast and making sure the water was hooked up. Simple enough, I could handle this; I'm halfway through! Then I got to the dryer, which I am now renaming The Piece of Shit, or The POS for short, because it literally made me cry.

I started by hooking up the vent that goes from the back of The POS to outside. Bad idea. The thing is 8 feet long and 7 inches wide piece of metal, and I'm working in 6 square feet of space. It kept bonking me on the head and taking up most of my space, and I still had a lot of work to do. Joining the vent to The POS was challenging because I had to screw on the clamp tightly but I only had six inches of space between the back and the wall, or enough space for my screw driver. I manned it up and managed to hook the vent up in 45 minutes. Yes, a long time.

Next I had to hook the power cord up to The POS. Did you know that when you buy a dryer it doesn't come with a power cord? I'm just glad someone told be at the store, because I never knew that. Anyways, I had to take out a bunch of screws to take off the back panel, hook up 3 prongs, and then screw the panel back on. The last test {or so I thought} was to plug in the cord to the wall. I felt like I was going to poop myself any moment because I was so scared I hooked it up wrong and would get electrocuted. The Lord Jesus was on my side though, because instead of being electrocuted I heard the peppy jingle the POS makes when it turns on.

Alas, I could do a load of laundry! In the morning! Because it was so late and night and I was delirious from frustration!

The next day I was so excited to do laundry, a feeling I have never had in my entire life. I put in some sheets and a few shirts, careful not to overload The Beast. I turned it to 'Normal Load', 'Regular Spin' and 'Light soil' and pushed 'Start'. The first 20 minutes went smoothly, and I didn't even know it was on due to it's quietness. When there was 32 minutes left in the wash cycle, all hell broke loose.

I was washing dishes and all the sudden I hear loud banging and I immediately ran to the laundry room. The Beast was 4 inches from where it originally was and it was bouncing all over the place. I pushed 'pause' and unplugged The Beast, called Vince, and cried. I just wanted to wash a damn load of laundry!

I called The Geek Squad at Best Buy and told them what was going on. His first question was, "Did you remove the 4 shipping bolts?" I insisted that I had, and asked him if it was necessary to have the stacker kit on and if that would reduce the bouncing. He explained why it was important to have the stacker kit on and said that it would reduce some noise, but the bouncing had to do with something else. I then told him that they sold me the wrong stacker kit. I read him the number on the package and he said that it was the correct stacker kit. I told him I would mess around with it and call him back if I couldn't figure it out.

So, by myself, I examine the bottom of the dryer and realized that Vince was trying to put the kit on the front and back, instead of on the sides like it supposed to. So I put the kit on successfully and told Vince he was stupid. As I was going to the back of the POS to screw in some supports for the stacker kit, I noticed 4 large bolts. Kind of like shipping bolts...

After asking Vince once again if he had in fact taken the bolts out, he said no. NO. Oh my god, I was so pissed off. I had to find the wrench in the packaging to get the bolts off and it was SO hard to squeeze myself behind The Beast to get the excruciatingly tight bolts off. Oh, and did I mention I had to take off the vent to get behind the machines? Ya, that meant another 45 minutes of hooking the vent up again.

But. I was finally done. Everything was hooked up. The POS was safely on top of The Beast.

I restarted The Beast and it ran smoothly the whole way through. I put the wet clothes in the POS and they got dry. It was a miracle.

And what was the most important thing I learned from this experience? Never believe The Men. They are idiots.