A Big Ol' DONE! Stamp

The best thing about house projects? When they're done, they're done.

It was a while ago that we got the new dishwasher and range delivered and I began the installation. But it was last night that I completed the dishwasher and we now have a nearly completely functional dishwasher now. Nearly completely because the door mechanism has some issues in that it doesn't close all the way and we are going to slowly steam apart the counter above the dishwasher.

There were a myriad of issues with this install. The first had to do with the location prep, the old dishwasher was OEM, a piece of shit and filthy. When it was pulled out, there was alot of work to be done to make the site usable again. As every other aspect of the house, the workmanship and materials are entirely sub-par and I renewed my desire to kick the builders square in the nuts for their shitty build quality.

I've no doubt that I would have sued them if I'd been the original owner.

So, last night I got to use my versa-saw to cut some access into the wall between the under-the-sink area and the dishwasher area. Once that was done, I installed a new elbow and a new off-valve (checking multiple times to make sure the leaks were contained) before hooking up the water connection for the dishwasher.

The other main issue was the stupid dishwasher itself. Most major appliances these days come with the power cords already wired up and all you have to do is plug them in and you're good to go. Not this dishwasher, this dishwasher had a hot and cold lead from the junction box on the bottom of the machine. Leaving it to me to figure out how to ground the dishwasher and get it wired up for power. That was fun and I just truly adore playing with electricity.

Before I could do any of that, I had to map the house's circuits. Which is basically a boring version of hide and seek. Turn off a circuit and then wander the house looking for lights that should be on but aren't.

In the end, the wiring job was a 50-50 chance of tripping the circuit breaker with a cross wired power connection. But I got lucky and got it right the first time.

Then it became a process of checking for leaks again and again, tightening and retightening connections until they were all pretty well wrangled.

It's not wholly complete right now but it works. We've got a dishwasher again. Now I get to pull the range out, cut the pipe coming out of the wall, shorten it, reconnect up the range, get the main oven working and replace everything so the range can sit flush against the wall. That'll be good fun, I'm sure. But at least I can look back at the end of the day and see my progress. That's nice.

That works even better when laying out a new floor like we're going to do in a couple of weeks. We're putting the easy lock laminate hard wood looking stuff down throughout the entire downstairs. That will make clean ups and sweeping up dog hair considerably easier. And easier is better!