Microwaves and Grandpas
Yesterday, I uninstalled my family’s old microwave from the wall on which it hung for over a decade. The darn thing weighed 90+ pounds. The thing is, though, I had help (and I needed help; I had no idea how to get the contraption off the wall). My grandpa Bup was there: he’s 81. The thing is, Bup is still downright sprightly - he brought over a bucket of tools appropriate for the job, and immediately set to work.
Now, the majority of a wall-mounted microwave’s weight sits on the lower lip of a wall plate; the reason for this is twofold: (1) this distributes the force of the microwave over 4+ screws and (2) hanging and unhanging the microwave can be done by setting it on the lip and rotating it into place. Thus, getting the microwave off the wall was pretty easy — the biggest difficulty confronted was removing the back plate on which the microwave sat. In order to support the weight of this thing in dry wall, toggle bolts with socket cap screws were used. Removal should’ve been, in theory, easy. However, it seemed that the metal of the toggle’s corroded, causing them to grip the screws much too tightly. To remove the hardware, Bup and myself had to push and pull in opposite directions. I was pushing a drill set on reverse into the wall while he was pulling back to set the wings of the toggle against the opposite side of the dry wall. This meant the screw could actually unscrew instead of simply spinning in the wall. So there we were, me and my 81 year old grandpa, pouring sweat into our tug of war and trying to get these screws out of the wall.
I can’t believe how strong my grandpa is for someone very nearly 4 times my age. In addition to the mounting plate difficulty, he carried the microwave out of the house with me! I know exactly how much work it is to carry the thing (after all, I was on the other end), and I was amazed at his stamina. It’s just awesome that Bup is still doing so well; I can only hope I have that much energy down the road. After all the work was done, we all went out to Perkin’s; there’s something very grounding about spending time with three generations of your family.