Mission (finally) Accomplished!

Dishwasher Installation Success!

Forgive the horrible taken-over-the-back-of-a-chair-with-my-phone-while-eating-lunch photo, I was just that excited. Hey, if you had been hand washing dishes for over 2 months with not one but TWO dishwashers in the middle of your kitchen floor you'd be excited too :)

Allow me to give you the brief recap of our dishwasher drama...

-February 16: Dishwasher & stove ordered

-March 22: Dishwasher & stove finally delivered after 3 previously scheduled-then-delayed delivery dates

-Next few days: J disconnects the old dishwasher with confidence he'll be able to hook up the new one

-After 83 trips to Lowe's, we discover that the type of valve that connects the water line to the dishwasher under our sink is not standard. It will connect to the old dishwasher pipe which will not fit the new dishwasher. The new pipe that came with our installation kit connects to the new dishwasher but doesn't fit the non-standard valve.

-Weeks pass while we ponder how to get around this. J worries about disconnecting the valve. I decide to just call a plumber.

-Two weeks later the plumber comes. He takes a quick look, says he sees what's going on with the valve, we just need a new (different) one. Plumber writes up the sales slip for standard installation + valve replacement for a grand total of $494. As I'm talking it over with J (who is at work), the plumber suddenly says he's "not supposed to do this but..." he would do the work for $290, final offer. Really? Two minutes later and the price is $200 less? How does that work exactly? Since we only paid $400 for the dishwasher itself and he seems to be less than trustworthy, we tell Mr. Plumber "thanksbutnothanks," and send him on his way.

-J goes in for yet another attempt on his own, armed with the new correct valve. A few hours later things are looking good. The dishwasher goes into it's new home, everything else gets attached appropriately, and a test wash is administered.  Success!

I have since been excitedly loading it with dirty dishes in eager anticipation of it's maiden wash cycle! Who knew one could be so thrilled over a kitchen appliance? We are still awaiting the maiden wash since not that many people live at our house, but we will finally re-assemble the kitchen when we see for sure that there aren't any leaks or issues. Meanwhile, some things are still out of place in the kitchen, and there's still an old dishwasher in the corner, but I'm not wasting time standing at the sink washing dishes, and that's what's really important in this story :D

This concludes the "Appliance" portion of The Great Kitchen Upgrade of 2012! We only started at Christmas and it's June, but who's in a hurry? ;)  So our upgrade list looks now like this...

Paint

Upgrade appliances

Paint cabinets

Lay new tile

*Over the past few months I think I would also add crown molding around the room and to finish off the tops of the cabinets, but those are less of an immediate necessity. 

Since we've had our tile for something like 2 years now, I'm guessing I'll be painting cabinets next! I think that will make such a huge difference in the whole look of our kitchen. Don't get me wrong the appliances certainly do their part for making things look much nicer, but the cabinets take up a lot more visual space. Having them painted white should really brighten and clean up the look of the entire room. Have you seen the difference it made in John & Sherry's kitchen on Young House Love? So excited!

Have you done anything fun to your house lately that you were seriously over-excited about? Do tell!

Dishwasher Disappointment

Sneak peek - there she is! :D

I did get to peek inside and admire her glory

But sadly, in the end, we're still staring at this now non-functional dishwasher :(

I guess I don't need need to say much beyond the title. The dishwasher install didn't work out. It actually started off really well and J was feeling confident that he'd be able to do it, but when it came time to disconnect some copper pipes we discovered that they were soldered together in multiple places. We certainly lack the appropriate equipment to take them apart without causing possible damage, so we decided to leave it for the pros. Ooohhhhh welllllllll. I've survived 5 years with this one, what's a few more days of staring at it? We just need to find the right person to take care of it for us. Doesn't it always happen when you're so so so excited for something that you get thisclose and it just dangles in front of your face for a while? No fun. 

Meanwhile, I'm working on creating some art for the kitchen and play room that I'm really excited to share! Check back for that an a dishwasher update in the next few days :D

Appliance Delivery!

The long-awaited and twice-postponed day of our stove and dishwasher's arrival finally came around. It was setting up to be a pretty hectic day. I was going to be here with C and my nephew who you may have read about here. J had a meeting at 1:00 and the delivery window we were given was between 2-4, a.k.a nap time. I could only imagine the delivery guys showing up at 2:00 on the dot waking C after a fraction of her nap, me managing both babies (who would naturally be hysterical) by myself while trying to calmly talk to the kind delivery persons. Luckily the stars aligned who am I kidding? God had mercy, and J's meeting ended in time for him to beat the delivery guys here, nephew ended up staying home, and C didn't stir during the entire process despite her bedroom being right above the front door which slams (and try telling delivery people not to let your door slam while they go in and out of it no less than 43 times).

It all went very well, but as with any story there is good news....

The stove looks fantastic :D

My pan sat so perfectly flat on it!

Yes, I marveled at the hot oil resting in the center of the pan. If you've ever cooked on wonky coils you can appreciate this.

Our first dinner- lemon pepper chicken was delicious!

So that was the good news. And here is the bad news...

Somehow I missed the memo that Best Buy neither installs your new dishwasher or hauls away your old one. Sad face. So we're in for a little DIY adventure with some friendly assistance from the interwebz. J is definitely not the classic sitcom husband who thinks he knows what he's doing when he doesn't. He is happy to admit that a project is beyond the scope of his toolbox. So while we're willing to give it a go ourselves, if things start going south I'm happy knowing that he won't insist that we forge ahead or "put a little duct tape" on something. If it doesn't work out we'll just reassemble things and call in a pro. But hey, if it's do-able (and from the instructions it seems to be), then we'll give it our best shot. I shall return with an update!

Say Goodbye

...to our little friends! Let's take one last look at our sadly outdated, though impressively still functional, dishwasher and stove. I'm fairly certain they were installed when the house was built back in 1999 making them a good 13 years old. Despite their outdated-ness and lack of aesthetic appeal, they have had no mechanicnal issues in the just about five years that we've lived here. We've never had to call for service on them. We're lucky that they've served us well and are now super excited to send them on their way and bring in their shiny new replacements!

Fiddlesticks!

Haven't heard that one for a while, have you? ;)

Well I have bad news. Our appliance delivery has been pushed back once again to the 22nd! Good thing they called my crafty husband who sweet-talked them into giving us some kind of refund as consolation for making us wait so long for the delivery. People are never accommodating to me. Have I ever told you the story of our honeymoon airline tickets?  The short version is that I bought tickets, the flight then got changed two times and left us with something like a 9-hour layover in Puerto Rico on our return trip on December 23rd. When I called to explain that this was unacceptable I was told that I could continue to monitor flights online myself to look for something better, but there would be a fee assessed for changing flights when/if I did find a new one. My husband called and was given new non-stop tickets on an entirely different airline and they were some $300 cheaper so we got a refund. Seriously?!

Anyway, here we sit, still cooking on the coil stove. Siiiiiigh.

Tonight is "girls' night" in our house - that means me and C-baby doing what we do.... cranking up the Laurie Berkner and dancing like fools. We may even get a little crazy and break out some play dough. I'm not sure yet. Daddy will be at a friend's 30th birthday celebration at Max's Taphouse in Baltimore. I'd love to join the celebration, but alas, someone has to mind the baby and we have a bunch of occasions coming up for which we have to leave her with a sitter, so I chose to stay home with her tonight. It's for the best anyway since she has finally come down with a bug she has been fighting since around Tuesday. It's a barking cough, runny nose, and a weepy eye. For a kid who is rarely sick (she's had the sniffles maybe 5 times in her life) she's rather pitiful. When I went in to get her from her crib this morning her hair was stuck to her face with tears from the weepy eye and snot :(  Her weepy eye is just the tiniest bit puffy and red (around the eye, not the eyeball itself) so between that and the runny nose you can tell she's sick just by looking at her. I feel just terrible for her, but she's not running a fever as of yet -knock on keyboard- so hopefully it won't require a trip to the doctor. I always feel like it's such a risk going into the "SICK" side of the waiting room. We've only had to go there once or twice, most recently for a patch of eczema, and I was downright terrified. She's got a pretty solid immune system though. I built up a hard-core resistance from working at a daycare for 5 years. Hopefully she's feeling better tomorrow. It's her cousin's 7th birthday party and since she has recently realized what "birthdays" are (cake, singing, presents), I know she will enjoy the party.

Gosh, so we've covered appliances, our honeymoon flight, what we're doing with our Friday night, and C's recent illness.... might as well just complete the gamut with a music video, right?

This is Michael Kiwanuka. He kind of has a Ben Harper~Jack Johnson thing going on. This is the extent of his work that I've heard so I can't speak for the rest of it, but I really liked this song.

Happy Weekend :D

Appliance Shopping Success

After doing lots and lots and lots (and lots) of online homework, J and I finally felt like we had narrowed down our field of potential appliances for the kitchen. At the outset I honestly thought doing that research would be fun and interesting - I enjoy design and decorating and often like perusing such things even when I'm not actually looking to buy. This was so much different than I expected! I did have fun at first, but then when I would find something I liked, then find too many bad reviews about motors blowing up in just a few months of use, or discover that a beautiful appliance had no features, or it was beyond our price range... well you can imagine. It got frustrating. We did have some specifications that we had to stick to so we couldn't just pick something from our price range and call it good.

We thought it would be ideal to find all three appliances (refrigerator, stove, and dishwasher) at the same retailer so we could easily schedule one delivery. That hope was short lived. We also had to have the counter-depth refrigerator and really wanted to avoid another side-by-side. We were ok with top freezer or bottom freezer with one top door, and french-door was the favorite. The stove and dishwasher I wasn't as particular about but still wanted them to be intelligent choices. We had to have hidden buttons on the dishwasher with our curious toddler around. She would never leave buttons on the front alone. As it is, we're lucky to have a difficult dial or she would have the dishwasher running randomly throughout the day. We also of course wanted them to match reasonably if they weren't going to be the same brand. We have to live with them for a few years until we're ready to move so I didn't want to just take whatever I could find.

All that said, we scoured online, found a few prospects and decided to peek around some nearby stores to see if there were any good deals there. Luckily a few stores had already started their Presidents' Day sales, so we did find some really good prices. After some browsing we selected all three appliances from HHGregg. We went back two days later and our dishwasher was no longer available. The stove was floor model only which I wasn't comfortable with, and there were just 4 of the refrigerator of our dreams (and for the price of our dreams- on a closeout sale for just $1,710) left in the warehouse. We got the fridge for next-day delivery and decided to go back to the drawing board for our dishwasher and stove.

The fridge was delivered Thursday and looks spectacular! The function isn't bad either, haha ;) While it is a relatively small fridge at 19.8 cubic feet of interior space, it fits beautifully in our kitchen and for the first time in almost 5 years our pantry door opens all the way! Luckily we don't store that much food around here with just two adults and a toddler. Our fridge primarily keeps milk, yogurt, eggs, butter, condiments and a few containers of leftovers which we either eat or clear out on a weekly basis. The freezer also feels smaller (though I'm not sure if it is based on cubic feet since the side-by-side freezer was pretty small) but I was still able to fit everything we had into it comfortably. Again, we don't store that much extra food.

Anyway, enough chatter... shall we take a look?

Hello, glorious new fridge! Why, are those hinges I see on that pantry door??

Allow me to briefly refresh your memory as to how our pantry has opened for the past 5 years...

About 45 degrees, right? A total pain to stand beside the pantry and reach in with half of your body. I don't even think this picture does it justice. I really should have taken a picture with someone standing there to show just how annoying it was. But alas, this is no more...

Our pantry door now opens almost a full 90 degrees! I really could slap the person who decided that the  refrigerator should be placed where the pantry door opens, but I think we have made the best of that with our little counter-depth beauty :) J and I have each caught ourselves standing beside the pantry with the door barely ajar reaching in. Such a nice realization to swing that door open a little further and actually stand in front of the pantry for the first time. 

As for the other two appliances, they are ordered and should be delivered on March 5th. I was so disappointed to have to go back and start doing more research to find new ones after our first picks fell through, but I think we're actually better off. I decided to go with Whirlpool after reading a Consumer Reports article showing they had the fewest number of service calls for the past 15 years in a row. The appliances that were in our house when we bought it were/are all Whirlpool (and I'm fairly certain they're the originals that were installed when the house was built in 1999) and so far none have needed repair since we've lived here. I found a dishwasher at Best Buy with tons of features, positive reviews and on sale for a steal at $411. We found a matching Whirlpool stove from Best Buy also for just $600. Our expectations were that we'd spend about $2,000 on the fridge and then get as close to $500 (or less) as possible for the dishwasher and stove. And we have success! 

I'm super excited for the other appliances to get here so we can have the whole set (they actually all match surprisingly well for being different brands). In the mean time, the hutch is clear and just needs to be taken out of the kitchen. Then I'll be finishing up my cutting in on that wall and repairing some corners so I'm ready to roll-- paint roll, that is. I'd love to get all rolling done in the kitchen during one good long nap time. I'll have to wait until J is home to help me move the stove and fridge so I can't paint behind them, but everything else can be done at nap time. I'd like all the paint done by the time the new appliances get here. We had a pre-tile consultation with our tile-laying helpers and that looks like it should be happening within the next month or so as well. Yay!

After paint, appliances and tile, the only thing left to do in the kitchen is painting the cabinets. Hopefully by the time the other stuff is done the weather will be warming up a little bit and I'll be able to get started on that project out on our deck. Can't wait! :)  Anyone else doing any make-overs at home? Has anyone painted their cabinets? If so, what's your best piece(s) of advice? I have a pretty clear plan based on what I know has worked perfectly for others, but I'm always open for pointers.