In order for Lowes to take away our old dishwasher, they said it had to be free of the counter and completely unhooked. So Sunday we set about doing just that. We had no idea what-so-ever of what we were doing or what we'd find back there. We got all the dishes out of it (Yes, I had taken to shoving dirties in there in a futile attempt to keep them from overflowing the counter and sink)(Did I tell you we are both very dishabled? There should be a support group or something hehe) and gave it a good yank. It wouldn't budge. Andy gave it another good yank. It was stuck. After doing some inspecting I discovered that there was a small tab on the top and someone had put a screw it in fixing the top of the dishwasher to the under side of the counter and of course it came right out after that was removed. Was that really needed? I don't think so. So now it's out and I need to figure out how to remove the water line and the electrical. The power line actually turned out to be super easy and that was my biggest worry. Flip the breaker, pull the lines out of the junction box under the machine and pull off the wire nuts and voila! The water line tho (which we discovered had been leaking) would not come off. I ended up just yanking the whole hookup section of the damn thing and being done with it. And that's when I realized just how old that dishwasher might be. It was hooked up with nothing more than a thick plastic tube, but it was done and out and ready to go and I was impatient to see the hated thing gone.
I had asked our friend Bill to come over and help us install the new dishwasher since I was being intimidated by the idea but I wasn't sure when he would be able to make it out. When Andy got home from work Monday night, we got the new one out of it's box and both just stared at it wanting nothing more than to have it hooked up and running. Keep in mind, we have been without one for two years. TWO years. We looked at each other and I glanced thru the instruction booklet (I never use them) and then thought over taking out the old one and we decided to give it a shot. I decided to start with the water line. Thank goodness we had them throw in a braided copper line with the machine. I opened up the cupboards and got a good look under our sink. I've never really taken the time to look under there and guess what I found? A very complicated, multi-filtered filtration system that takes up all the space and has a million lines running everywhere and being completely in the way. I knew we had a filter under there, but I thought there was only one big one but there is the big one and then four little ones. It was very frustrating and I don't even care for the taste of the water that comes out of the filter (course they all probably need to be replaced). Anyway, I had to fight with the shutoff to get it to turn but finally got the hot water turned off before unhooking the old machine the day before. I had to argue with the lines again to get the old water line unhooked and the new one hooked up. Andy then fought with the old drain line to get it off the disposal. Then a hole had to be drilled in the cabinet wall so we could actually hook up the new drain properly (the old one was running up from the bottom but it needs to run down from the top in order to not back up in the dishwasher and make it stink to high heaven as we had been experiencing) and ran the new drain line. We then shut off the power once again and my unhandyman husband took a crack at hooking up the electricity. He did a great job by the way. I got the water hooked up and turned on to check for leaks and found none (yay) and it was ready to be pushed under the counter. This new machine is a tad bit bigger all around than the old one and we had to fight with the insulation to get it to go under (I ended up just taping the back end of it all to the back of the machine) but we finally got it under. We loaded it up and shut the door, and guess what? It turned on and ran! Woohoo. We had to fight with a few things and we were both tired and irritated by the time we got it done, but we did it ourselves!
We can now officially replace dishwashers and toilets! hehe. By the way, a toilet is much easier to replace than a dishwasher.
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