A Disposal that Purrs

While we were debating about whether or not to hire a professional to install our new bathroom sink fixture, this guy decided he'd had enough and stopped working:

D did all the standard troubleshooting - reset it, manually pushed the blades with a stick to make sure nothing was stuck, etc. It growled to life occasionally but really was at the end. We quickly looked at how to install a new one and decided it would be difficult to get the dishwasher hookup, the plumbing, and the wiring (while keeping a baby busy) and decided we should hire a handyman.

First though, we had to pick out the new disposal. We decided to stay with insinkerator because we thought sticking with the same brand might make the install easier. Plus that immediately narrowed down our choices to make the final pick easier. It looked like we had two choices - badger, which seems to be used a lot in rental properties and was noisy, and evolution, which was what homeowners seemed to choose, and was quieter. Then it was just a matter of looking up our old unit to get the dimensions to figure out that the compact was a closer match. And thanks to the magic of Amazon prime, two days later we were in business:

We got a local handyman for early the next week and managed with a food trap and with manually pushing the blades to get the water to drain. Occasionally, as mentioned above, we got it to run, leading me to wonder if we were giving up prematurely.

But the big day rolled around and D cleared out the cabinet:

Ick....You'd think this might be a good opportunity to replace that mat, but no, we didn't think about that. In fact, it's only just occurring to me now, several days later as I look at the photo.

Here's the new disposal, mid-hook-up (I'm sure there's a great inappropriate comment to insert here, but I'll leave that to your imagination):

 And from the top, complete with dirty dish just to, you know, keep it real:

I wasn't actually home for this install but D said it took about an hour an a half. And given that this guy knew what he was doing, I think it was a good thing we hired someone. He wasn't cheap, but I'm not sure when we would have found time to spend a few hours on this project.

It's so quiet I needed to add a video. I turn it on after about 2 seconds. Do you hear that? Yeah, me neither...

And a random public service announcement. The booklet on our disposal specifically instructs us to only use it only with COLD water. No idea why, but there you go.

While doing this repair, we discovered that the faucet fixture might be leaky (or, more accurately - there is a slow leak and it *may* be due to the faucet). The handyman thinks we can just replace one of the rubber washers, so fingers crossed!