I'm sitting here listening to the quiet, purposeful hum of our new dishwasher. I installed it last week, a couple of days after we discovered our old one was a dead stinking carcass in the middle of our kitchen.
We shopped around a little, taking a break from work to visit nearby stores. We had some ideas about what we wanted -- a Whirlpool with more capacity for tall items on the bottom rack, utensil basket in the door, the dishwasher we could live with for a while. We were willing to spend the necessary $$ so that we wouldn't have to do this again when we remodeled the kitchen. We ended up getting this one.
We didn't buy it right away so we could check Consumer Reports and our finances. I pulled the old one out Thursday afternoon without too much trouble. Everything came apart easily until I got to the water intake pipe. I just couldn't get the leverage to unbolt it from underneath the 'washer. The pipe was stiff copper but easy to cut, so that's what I did. The old dishwasher was out and I cleaned the enclosure to make ready for the new one.
I also cannibalized the power cord so I could use it again. I was hoping that the hole cut in the cabinet for the power/intake/outtake lines would work for the new dishwasher. My sweety went to get the new dishwasher after dinner and I started working on the install. Luckily, even though the two machines were made by different companies, they had standardized hook-ups. Installation was mostly a reversal of the uninstall. I connected the power cord and then we moved the machine into the kitchen. So far so good.
I know now that I should have hooked up the intake line before moving the 'washer into position, while it was still lying on its back. Instead I got to install that while lying on my belly, craning my neck to see. There was barely space for a 1/4 turn on the bolts. Not a lot of room under these things. Before that I connected the outflow line and threaded that and the power cord through the hole in the cabinet.
That wasn't as easy as it sounds because of the way our kitchen is set up. We have one of those corner sinks, meaning that the cabinet under the sink -- where all these lines had to end up -- wasn't a nice open space, it was a cramped little hole with foot wide openings. So I've got the dishwasher pulled partway out of its enclosure, a foot away from the cabinets on the left side and I'm jammed into this space, trying to stick my arm between the dishwasher and the enclosure wall to grab the power cord.
After that I was reaching my left hand to the back corner so I can hook up the intake line. Oh, and my head is partly crammed into this opening, too. Luckily I'm dexterous with my left hand, even without being left-handed.
One by one I made the hookups and did what I could to check them. Power on? Check. Water intake? Check... oh, wait, there's a *tiny* leak. I needed a break at that point because the bead of water was building up where the intake met the underside of the dishwasher... my very favorite part of the installation. Arggggg. I disconnected the line, trying to get most of the water into a container, mopping up the rest with a rag. I cranked on the elbow connector, since it was the leaker, and reconnected the line. It looked good after I turned the water back on, but I decided to give it a rest. In fact, I didn't finish until the next day, and, happily, there were still no leaks at that point.
To finish up, I screwed the mounting brackets into the underside of the counter and screwed on the kick-plate. Oh, and one of the kick-plate screws was screwy -- a vertical section of the threads was sheared off, or never there in the first place. That one took a bit more muscle, but eventually it gave in to my powers of persuasion.
And now it's all done, except for re-adjusting the position of the dishwasher so it's square with the cabinet and not showing so much of the opening on the left side (no, we're not anal or anything). We've run it a couple of times and it works just dandy. The old one is still sitting on the breezeway outside, waiting to be taken to the used appliance store where I can dispose of it for $5.