New Appliances!

Our kitchen appliances, or lack thereof, have been a bit of a problem for us since we moved into our house. When we bought the house, we swore we would replace the stove as soon as we could, and this past week we were finally able to do it.

As you can see, the stove is apartment style, very small. You can really fit only one thing in the oven at a time, the burners were crusty, and it rarely heated anything evenly. It worked alright for awhile, but after a few months it just became a real hassle. So we finally ripped it out!

As you can see below it left a pretty ugly hole with a very mismatched wall (another project all together); however, that hole was not nearly big enough to fit a full sized stove. So, we decided to use that space to fix another problem we've had with the kitchen: there's no dishwasher. By tearing out the tiny area of cabinet and counter to the left of the hole, we would have just enough room for a dishwasher.

It really was the perfect spot for one since it was right next to the sink, making the plumbing very easy. Plus Susie got to use her superbar to take out the excess counter top. See how perfect it all goes in there?

Yet now something was missing? Can you see it? Well, we blame Al Gore for the mix up. You see we had another dishwasher picked out, one that wasn't as nice, but it was cheaper and it came with a faux-counter top on it, but the inconvenient truth of it was that dishwasher was not an energy star model. When we went to the store, we saw this one that was $60 more but also much more energy efficient, and since we are skiers and therefore fear global warming like the plague, we ponied up the dough and bought the earth-friendly model, which also has a quick sterilizing mode, which will be great for baby bottles. It wasn't until we got it all installed that we realized this newer, nicer, eco dishwasher didn't have a counter top. Damn that Al Gore!

So it was back to home depot to buy a counter top, which was easy enough to find and surprisingly inexpensive, which should have alerted us to watch for that other shoe to drop. The catch? Home Depot won't cut counter tops for you unless they are going to install them, which of course drives the price tag through the roof.

The solution, we decided, was to buy the $40 power saw and do it ourselves! I know it sounds like the start of an episode of ER, but surprisingly no limbs were lost. And there was the added bonus of Rachel looking super cool in the process.

Susie got in on the action as well. While Rachel was working on the counter top, she was busy building the supports to go over the dishwasher and under the counter top. This job would have been easier if we would have thought to do it before installing the dishwasher, but Susie managed to work around that using some boards and braces. Seriously, if that dishwasher or counter top ever moves, it will be through an act of God.

Never mind that after cutting it down the counter top was still about a millimeter too big in the back (the sink counter top isn't exactly level), and we had to go back to Home Depot one more time and get a big file to size it down. In the end it was all worth it. We saved the environment with the dishwasher, saved some money on the counter top, and we saved our marriages by finally finishing the project.

What do you think? Not bad for amatures?

Oh, and what about the stove you ask? We had to have a new gasline run along our only open wall for that.

Of course nothing is easy. When we got the stove, it wasn't working :( The electronic control panel was completely broken, so we have had to wait a week to get someone out there. Of course they were very apologetic and are fixing it for free, but it was still a bummer to have to wait. We have been able to use the stovetop, but the oven needs electricity, so we have had to wait to make our lasagna.

Anyway here it is now. It makes the part of the kitchen look a lot smaller, but that really is a small price to pay in order to be able to cook lasagna, garlic bread, and green bean bacon bundles all at the same time.