Washer and Dryer

I left a perfectly good washer and dryer (above) when I sold my house in Georgia.

There's a story, of course. There always is.

Heather lost her old but serviceable washer and dryer in 2011's Hurricane Irene. She was living in Sloatsburg, NY in an apartment just above the Ramapo River. All of Sloatsburg flooded and there was eight feet of water in the basement, which played hell with her appliances.

She phoned me on the day of the hurricane to tell me water was in the foyer of the building. It was one four-inch step away from flooding her apartment.

I told her to get her cats and laptop and toothbrush and get the hell out and call me when she was safe. She did. I didn't realize it, but anticipating flooding, she had parked her car on the other side of highway 17. To get to it she waded across four lanes with six inches of rushing water. Was that safe? No it wasn't, but she made it.

Whenever she was able to get a cell signal I served as her OnStar girl, guiding her toward her friends' house in Washingtonville. Roads were closed and closing all around her, but after four hours she managed to find an open road and reach her destination and a well-deserved warm night's sleep.

The water didn't get into the apartment, but everything in the basement was a loss. Her washer and dryer were hauled away and discarded, and she elected not to get replacements. So began the era of the laundromat.

Back in Georgia there's a laundromat on every corner, but they're rather rare in the Hudson Valley and northern New Jersey. For several years she haunted them-- or rather I should say visited them, for she went only when she had absolutely no clean clothes. On the frequent occasions when I was visiting I would go with her and pretend to not know how to fold clothes.

Scratch that. I really don't know how to fold clothes. Or just let me say that I consider them folded, but Heather doesn't. Most people wouldn't. I consider it a problem in topology.

When we bought our house in Ringwood I volunteered to bring my washer and dryer, but after suffering through more than three years without, Heather wanted high-efficiency machines. Who was I do deny a woman who had suffered for so long?

In the new house the hookups for the washer and dryer were in the basement. It's a nice basement, so far as basements go, but the stairs were more ladder than anything else, and even when we had them rebuilt they remained narrow-- I'm talking two feet wide. Width is limited by the log construction, which dates to 1940.

Neither of us wanted to lug clothes up and down narrow steps, so we looked for alternatives. Would it be possible, we wondered, to relocate the washer and dryer to the kitchen area?

Yes, it would.

Heather selected a Samsung washer and a Samsung dryer and had them delivered and stacked. Throughout the horrible winter we continued to visit the laundromat, but when the snow was finally gone we contracted with the two Daves to run plumbing and electric wires to our new appliances.

The two Daves are Dave Harvey (Plumbing) and Dave Burton (Electricity). Both of them did a great job. They worked fast and their charges were reasonable.

We knew Dave Harvey because his wife works with Heather; we got Dave Burton's name from Mark Fanella, whose name we got through Dave Harvey. It's all about connections.

We had Mark back later to replace the sheetrock which had to be removed for the wiring and plumbing.

We've had no problems with the double Daves' work, but we did hit a hiccup when we tried to use the washer and dryer. Film at eleven.