The Kitchen Built Around the Dishwasher

For the last few months we have been hand-washing all of our dishes due to our dishwasher deciding to flood our kitchen about midnight one night. I remember it well....Stella Cat alerted us to the sound of water dripping and that's when we discovered that our dishwasher was no longer draining. It's also went we discovered that we couldn't repair it due to the dishwasher being put in before the floor. And also when we discovered that the company had discontinued this dishwasher due to how horrible it
was.

So for months now we have been hand-washing. Not because we couldn't afford a new dishwasher because honestly it's probably one of the cheaper appliances you can buy but because we knew in order to get our old one out and new one in, we had to take up the floor. So we kept putting it off and putting it off. 

But sometimes you just snap and you are tired of washing that plate for the hundredth time. You just want to put the dang thing in the dishwasher and be done with it! 

So we started investigating how to take up our floor which is just a snap in wood flooring. It always seems like when we start a project around here, we discover that it's much harder than it has to be, so we were expecting to have to take up the flooring from the farthest point in the room just so we could get to the dishwasher. But much to our surprise we didn't have to. We had to take up about six rows until right in front of the dishwasher. Rob could then get off the front and change the legs and that was that.

But it's never really just that, is it? 

As soon as he went to move the dishwasher we heard dripping and smelled a sewage smell. Water was pouring from underneath the dishwasher all over the place. We open the dishwasher to discover a good amount of standing water. Since we had emptied the dishwasher of water from the first draining incident and hadn't use it since we could only assume it was backwash from the garbage disposal. Also it smelled like sewage. Rob scrambled for his shop-vac and we got the water out of the dishwasher and tried drying the floor the best we could. So now we needed to completely remove the dishwasher in order to get a fan on the floor so we could dry it out.

But again not as easy as it sounds...

As it turns out, there's our snap-in flooring then a thin install sheet then plywood then another layer of flooring, so still the floor was a little too high. But Rob was able to work with it until he could wiggle it out without damaging the floor. Because frankly who cares about the dishwasher at this point! Then he discovered that there were back legs that he couldn't quite reach that were holding us up.

Finally he was able to maneuver the dishwasher enough to get a tool back there and get those legs shortened and we were cooking with grease again. He disconnected the water line and drains. And we pulled it out far enough so we could see where it was plugged in, only to discover that they plugged the dang thing in then drywalled over it. Who does that?!

Now that title is starting to making sense, right? 

So that's when we decide to call it a night. We move the dishwasher out of the way as much as we can, clean up our mess, and get a fan on the floor. Rob makes sure the water is on to the sink and then we can go about our business in peace. 

Except...

When he turned the cold water back on at the sink, it start spraying everywhere under the sink resulting in it being turned right back off.

So here's where we stand. We have a dishwasher still plugged in somewhere under the drywall. We have no cold water in the kitchen sink. We have no garbage disposal since that's the same circuit as the dishwasher and we wanted to leave that off. We are eating in the dining room and are still washing the dishes by hand. 

Yup, that about sums it up.

xo, B

Update:: The cold water has sense been fixed in the kitchen. A new valve was put on, along with a new one for the toilet upstairs and the guy changed out the valve for the dishwasher for free. So at least I have cold water again in the kitchen,