A New Dishwasher!

Dishwasher's are a rare thing in Mexico.  They do sell them, but very few people have them and use them.  For the first 9 months of living here, I washed all our dishes by hand....those hand washing days are over (oops, I didn't mean I don't wash my hands anymore, I meant I no longer have to wash the dishes by hand). 

It all started a few months ago.  My parents told us that they wanted to give us a dishwasher for Christmas.  So off we went to Laredo, Texas to pick out a dishwasher at Sears.  We wanted a little more variety than Whirlpool Quiet Partner I, II, or III (those are the 3 versions that they sell here).  Plus they are way more expensive here!  We bought the dishwasher and brought it home with no problems....

Let the problems begin....Checo had the fun job of building a cabinet (or whatever it is) for the dishwasher to go in and then installing it.  You see, it wasn't possible to put the dishwasher under the countertop to the left of the sink because the countertop was too short.  It wouldn't fit.  We decided to put it in the laudry room, which is right next to the kitchen.  So to load the dishes from the kitchen sink to the dishwasher, it's just a quick pivot (about 160 degrees to be close to exact) to the right.  It was a perfect spot because there was a huge sink there that came with the house- of all things, a sink in the laundry room came with the house, but no kitchen counters or cabinets- go figure.  The good thing was it already had a drain and all the plumbing to hook up the dishwasher since the sink was there.  So Checo started by taking out the sink.  Oh, if it was only that simple! The sink was not just attached to the wall, it was cemented in the wall, all the way through to the other side of the wall.  So as Checo was drilling into the cement to get the sink out, out came the sink, but so did a big piece of the other side of the wall.  Checo had another mini project- patch the wall and repaint it.  I took pictures, but they are saved on a cd somewhere, and I don't want to go look for it.

So the monster sink was out.  Next- build a home for the dishwasher.

Oh Checo, you look so happy to be installing the dishwasher!

Then Checo hooked up the electrical and the plumbing.  I really don't know all that that entailed because I was busy trying to keep Sammy away from all the tempting tools the whole time. 

Next Checo put on a tile countertop. 

Then he stained the wood and touched up all the paint on the walls.

And here it is- the finished product!!!

You might be asking, "Why is it elevated on a block of wood?"  Well, it's because the sink that was previously there came with a tile basin where the drain was located.  So instead of making this project even harder, Checo put a piece of plywood on top of the tile and cement basin and set the dishwasher on top of that.  It actually works out quite nicely to have it elevated a bit because the bottom rack isn't so low!

Here is Sammy licking the beater clean by the kitchen sink.  Look closely in the top right hand corner of the picture- that's Checo's pant leg- he was working on the dishwasher.  So you can see that the sink is pretty close to the dishwasher.

I must say that I was quite impressed with Checo's handyman skills.  He sure was happy to have that project over with!
Thank you Checo for all your hard work and thanks Mom and Dad for the dishwasher!
I just realized how carried away I got with giving you a step-by-step on the dishwasher installation.  I'm sure I've lost over half of you by now.  Sorry about that.  I don't know why I wrote so much about that.  I promise the next entry will be more interesting.