Go Get Yourself a Cheap Dishwasher

 

Should you spend a lot on appliances?  If you want to....

Our old Kitchen Aid (Whirlpool) dishwasher died after 18 years.  Well, it still ran, but it leaked all over the floor, more than once, ruining the Engineered Hardwood floors.  Those bastards at This Old House have a lot to answer for - Engineered Hardwood was one of the neat-o products that Tom and Norm hyped on the show.  Vinyl planks and tile planks seem to be the new thing - at least they promise to be more water-resistant.

18 years is a long time - most appliances are designed for a 15-year design life and this is three years beyond that.  Throw in hard water and what's not to love?  We found the dishwasher encrusted with lime a few years back and ran some lime-away through it.  It sparkled!  A few years later it leaked all over the floor - not a lot and not all the time.  I cleaned the door seals with lime-away and that seemed to fix the problem.

By the way, during these episodes, I removed the dishwasher from the cabinet and was appalled by how sloppy the "professional installation" was.  They left the cover off the electrical connection box, and the wires were just hanging down (not secured with a conduit clamp or anything.  Yank the plug wire (they wired it with a plug) and the whole thing would become disconnected and probably electrocute you.

Where the unit was supposed to attach to the cabinet, the screws were not even threaded all the way in.  House flippers, man!  Why?  So I fixed the install as best I could (sans the connection box cover which was AWOL.  Did I mention they failed to put an air-gap trap on the drain line or even a trap loop?  Anything that backed up in the main sink went back into the dishwasher!

That's what you get with "free installation" from the local appliance store. No thanks, I'll do it myself!

Anyway, last month it started leaking again and more frequently - turning our blonde hardwood floors black.  If you let it dry out, as I noted before, most of the color comes back, with some grey stainage.  Again,  Engineered Hardwood was a fad at the time, and time has not been kind to it!  I tried cleaning the seals again and realized there was a LOT of crusty lime on the bottom of the door that I had missed before.  I scrubbed and scrubbed and applied lime-away gel until my hands burned, but to no avail.  After 18 years, the door seals were just not sealing.

A new door seal is $88 at Whirlpool, plus shipping.  Amazon has a generic gasket for $25.  I already replaced the silverware basket ($25 for a generic) and the rise agent cap (fell off and melted to the heater coil) which cost another $25.  Was I ready to throw another hundred bucks at an end-of-life appliance?  Rust was starting to show around the door and the plastic control panel had turned from white to a putrid chartruse - as certain types of plastic are known to do. The drain hose has turned yellow and powdery and is hard as a rock.  There comes a time to call it quits.

It was a nice machine - stainless steel body with a white painted door.  Today, most machines are plastic bodies with stainless steel doors - painted in clearcoat.  We went to Lowe's and they had a Whirlpool, very similar, but with a plastic body, in stock, for $499.  It was the second-cheapest machine they had.  They had a "Frigidaire" model in white for $399, but out-of-stock.

These "big box" stores carry very little inventory, other than a few "cash and carry" items.  We went to La Salsa for street tacos and beers and tried Home Depot.  They had a Whirlpool, but not in stock, but had a GE model for $448, identical to the Frigidaire.  I asked the nice lady if they could do anything about the price and she knocked $50 off without blinking, bringing the price to $398, beating Lowes by a dollar.

Besides, our cheap new microwave is a GE, so it "matches" so to speak.

Put it in the truck and off we went.  I decided to buy a new install kit ($20) as the plastic supply hose looked sketchy after 18 years.  Also, for some reason, newer dishwashers require an adapter for the supply line - garden hose to 3/8" compression.  It all came in the kit.

The old dishwasher was wearing a "jacket" of insulation and Mr. See suggested we transfer that to the new machine.  Piece of cake and I am sure it cut down on the sound level.  The machine is not noticeably louder than the old one.  The old machine had a stainless body, covered with a tar-like sheet to cut down on drumming noises.  Plastic bodies don't have as much of a problem, apparently.

The cheaper machines do cut some other corners, though.  The seal between the frame and cabinets (which clips on) is "optional" so I took it off the old machine, cleaned it, and put it on the new on.  It gives the install a finished look.

I added a trim piece under the edge of the counter, as the opening (again, flippers!) was at least an inch too tall, and you can't screw the retraining clips into Corian anyway.  Problem solved and it looks better than the old machine did, not that you'd notice unless you are sitting on the floor.

Why not buy a $500 or $900 machine? Well, the old machine lasted 18 years and 18 years from now I will be 83 years old, if I live that long.  I have already have had a (mild) stroke and am taking small doses of anti-dementia medication and.... a new twist, Parkinson's medication.  It isn't as bad as it sounds, and I am feeling better on the meds.  BUT.... I doubt we will be living here in 18 years, much less five or ten, tops.  We have talked a lot about downsizing in the past, and the time may be coming sooner than we think.

Our 18-year-old kitchen with its custom-made honey-brown cabinets and Corian countertops and white appliances was already outdated in 2006.   Today, a buyer would rip it all out and half the walls as well.  Perhaps we might paint the cabinets white and the walls "sea salt" grey (already so 2020!).

But as you get older, throwing money at houses gets really old, really fast.  Sure a fancy kitchen is nice to show off, but that's about all they are good for.  Most people I know with "gourmet" kitchens can't even boil water without burning it and they eat out - all the time - at fast-casual restaurants.  They call themselves "foodies" too.  I am not being judgmental here, just observing.  They are nice folks, but the fancy kitchen is just another accessory - like the Lexus in the driveway - designed to denote status.  And humans are status-seeking creatures.  We all are.

Well, I think until you reach a certain age and realize that just being healthy and financially secure is really all that matters/  What other people think of you quickly loses its importance in your life.  And even the "pride of ownership" of nice things fades quickly as those nice things turn into an endless stream of chores or people you have to pay to do those chores for you.

At this point, all I want is a dishwasher that doesn't piss all over the floor!

Joint Tenancy (With Right of Survivorship)

When legislators change the laws, it can result in unintended consequences.

We put the condo on the market and got two offers fairly quickly.  The first wanted us to "take back" a note (mortgage) with the buyer paying cash for the rest.  As I have noted before, this can be advantageous from a tax perspective, as instead of having a one-time capital gains, you can have a spaced-out income stream (including interest!) over a number of years.  That offer did not pan out.

A second buyer quickly came in, looking to buy and then rent out the condo as a landlord.  They offered $150,000 cash with closing in two weeks.  We moved closing to January 7th so as to have the reported income in 2025, not 2024.  But then all hell broke loose.

The title insurance company balked, claiming there were "clouds" in the title.  The chain of title is pretty short.  The condo company bought the apartment complex from the original landlord and then created the condominium and sold off the individual units to buyers.  The first buyer, in 1982, was a flight attendant who bought the place for $38,000, with her Father co-signing the loan, I believe.  They were listed as "Joint Tenants" on the title.  Nearly two decades later, she sold the unit to us in 1999 for.... $38,000.  The units had appreciated to over fifty grand in the interim, but the real estate bubble of 1989 burst and it wasn't until the 2000's that the properties started appreciating again.

Her Father had since died, and as was the practice in the 1980s, a copy of the death certificate was filed, which under the old law would have perfected title solely in the flight attendant's name.  She, in turn, conveyed title to us, in fee simple, as the sole owner of the property.

So now, 25 years later, we are trying to sell.  What's the problem?  Well, under Title 55-20.1 of the Virginia code as amended in 1999, the term "Joint Tenants" no longer includes "survivorship" unless explicitly set forth in the deed, for example by saying "Joint Tenants With Right of Survivorship" or "JTWROS" as they say on car title deeds.

I talked about JTWROS a long time ago.  If you own a property in JTWROS with another person, when one of you dies, the property automatically conveys to the remaining party(s).  No will, no intestate, no probate. Just record a copy of the death certificate and you're done.

Property can be held in a number of ways.  You can be a sole owner, own through an LLC or other corporate entity, own as Tenants in the Entirety (if you are married) or as Tenants in Common or as  Joint Tenants. (We will leave Life Estates for trick questions on the Bar Exam). Tenants in the Entirety is similar to JTWROS, in that if one spouse dies, the property automatically conveys to the other. Each spouse owns the "entirety" of the property, hence the name.

Tenants  in common means each tenant owns a share of the property - usually 50/50 for two owners.  When we bought Washington Road in 1989, the title company handling the closing put us down as Tenants in Common.  I asked him to correct this to JTWROS and he balked.  "If you died, Mr. See would get the whole house?  Don't you want your half to go to your family?"  Being gay back then was something of a novelty still - and may soon become so again.  But the documents were corrected and the closing attorney shook his head in amazement that two men would want to own a property together in JTWROS.

And  by the way, I made sure the phrase "with right of survivorship" was in the deed.  And it is a good thing I did, as at that time, the law in Virginia had been changed, such that unless those magic words were included, "Joint Tenants" was presumed to mean Tenants in Common.  The raises the question, if Joint Tenants (sans magic words) means Tenancy in Common, then why have two legal terms for the same thing?  It makes no sense at all.

I am not sure what the impetus to change the law was.  My gut reaction is that it was a housekeeping statute, designed to bring Virginia property code in line with the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) a movement that has been going on for some time to bring various State Laws into conformity with one another so as to avoid confusion.  In this case, it created it.

Or maybe they changed the law because those nasty gays were buying houses in Joint Tenancy and during the AIDS crises, families who threw their gay kids out of the house as teens, now wanted half of the rapidly appreciating homes the gays bought in gentrifying neighborhoods.  Let's hope it wasn't that!  Then again, what explanation makes any sense?

The question is, of course, whether it was meant to be retroactive.  I found one source that said it was not (I cannot find it again, thanks Google AI!).  Meanwhile, Google AI, without any sources, other than the code, claims it was.  If the latter is the case, it throws the validity of a huge number of property titles in the Commonwealth of Virginia into question.  In the hundreds of years property has changed hands in the State, surely there is a "Tenants in Common" deed in the chain of title of nearly every property!

This Richmond School of Law, Law Review article seems to imply that the legislative intent was to make the law retroactive, unless....

"The better view would suggest that the amendment and reenactment of the effective date provision in section 55-9, which occurred in pari materia with the enactment of new section 55-20.1, shows a legislative intent that section 55-20.1 should be treated the same way, i.e., retroactively, except to the extent that such retroactivity would affect vested rights. See id. §§ 55·9, -20.1 (Cum. Supp. 1999)"

In this case, after the death of her Father, the flight attendant had vested rights.  He died in 1989, vesting her rights to the property a decade before the law was passed.  It seems so simple to me!

So, 25 years have passed.  Believe it or not, the flight attendant is still alive, but it appears that there may be other heirs descendant from her Father.  If they can be found and persuaded to sign a quitclaim deed, the problem is solved.  But of course, what is their motivation to sign?  They might argue that they are entitled to a share of the property - maybe even up to one-half!  Although I suspect the flight attendant is one of the heirs and thus the share would be far less.

There are other options, of course.  We could (and probably will) bring a Motion to Quiet Title to perfect out title claim.  If my legal argument is correct and the "new" Title 55-20.1 doesn't apply retroactively, then the issue is moot. I would also argue that since we have been "notoriously occupying" the property for 25 years, we take title by adverse possession.  What constitutes notorious occupation varies, but paying the property taxes and utilities is one sure sign.  There may be some statute of limitations issues, but I am not sure of that.  25 years is a long time.

No matter what happens, it appears we lost the buyer and we will have to put the property on the rental market again, as it may take months to sort this all out.

But what about title insurance?  Yes, we had a policy - for $38,000 - and the title insurance company went bankrupt in the meltdown of 2008.  We can file a claim with the State Insurance Commission, but that may return only pennies on the dollar and take years (I plan on doing it anyway).  Meanwhile, a motion to quite title will run $5,000 to $10,000 in attorney's fees.

This leaves the original title company - do we sue them?  They should have "errors and omissions insurance" of their own, which should cover the cost of the motion to quiet title.

In any event, it is a real hot mess, and if you know someone who wants to rent a condo in NoVa, let me know!