Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Financial Peace: Know your limits

This past weekend my garbage disposal got in a fight with a baby food jar. After spending almost an hour carefully digging out every piece of glass I could, I flipped the switch and it still didn't work. I tried the reset button. No luck. Seriously?! I figured I had lived over 25 years without a disposal, I didn't need one now. If it was only that simple. For some reason, the drain didn't seem to run either. I tried both drains, but no luck.

Tim started researching disposals on the internet. We discovered the one the previous owners installed is below industry standards (no surprise there), but it's managed for a while. New ones would run us a couple hundred dollars or more. I'm pretty sure we could install it ourselves. We're not extremely handy, but we certainly can get by.

Despite all the research and pushing by others, Tim and I decided to call in our trusty plumber first. The disposal used to back up in to the other drain, so I wanted them to see if it was even hooked up right to start with before replacing it. I was secretly hoping they would be able to fix the problem, but wasn't holding out much hope. Glass can do a real number on things. Luckily, we have a plumber we've used before and trust.

They came out yesterday, used a 'disposal tool' and were able to get the last little bits of glass through the system. IT IS WORKING AGAIN!!! I had him review the set-up. He gave me some pointers and said it's worth waiting a year or two until we decide exactly what we want to do with the kitchen (I have dreams of a remodel). In all, he was in and out in about 30-45 minutes.

So... instead of $300-$500 plus hours of aggravation, we spent $61 for a service call and it's all fixed!!! Lesson learned - Know your limits and call in the experts when the time is right.

No comments:

LinkWithin

Related Posts with Thumbnails