Kitchen Appliance Update: Frustrations Abound

I know it has been a couple of weeks since my last post, but we have been busy struggling to install the new kitchen appliances. Prepare yourself for a marathon post.

The first priority was the dishwasher. If you remember, the old one was completely non-functional and looked like this:

I put the dishwasher in the free section of craigslist, and soon enough, a scrapper guy came to pick it up. We were so happy we didn't have to haul it somewhere! ...which left us with a hole that looked like this:

It is a little hard to tell in the photo, but the floor was disgusting until used a bit of elbow grease:

Finally the new one arrived - here I am with my family just after we carried in the dishwasher. So exciting!!

It seemed so simple... hook up the cords and push it in...

...but then we had a leak, which lead to lots of this...

and this...

and this...

After an epic struggle (and 2 trips to the hardware store), we have a functioning dishwasher. Oh how living w/out one for 2 months make you appreciate just how much time & effort dishwashers save!!! (and doesn't it look sleek?!)

 

Since we had sold our old range on craigslist (got $175 for it - hooray), the next priority was installing the new range. Again we ran into a couple of challenges. First, the toe board on the cabinet next to the range was too long. So we got out the hacksaw and performed some precision carpentry:

But that wasn't all. We realized that the non-flexible electrical conduit and extremely large outlet box prevented us from pushing the range back to the wall. So, yet again we made some precision cuts big holes in the wall so that everything would fit.

A bunch of duct tape later, the wall behind our range looked pretty bad.

But it worked! Hooray! Did I mention this range is super HUGE inside and that the bottom drawer functions as a warming drawer?

You may have guessed, but our troubles were not over yet. Next came the refrigerator, which we quickly found our did not FIT in the space we had.... Which meant we needed to move over the bottom and top cabinets about an inch and a half. After removing all the nails and winning a wrestling match, we were left with this:

Eek! Luckily, my family was over yet again to help (gotta love 'em!). Even my little sis Rozi helped out by removing some nails!

While we were at it, we ripped down the yucky brown-painted formica backsplash. Unfortunately, that left us with damaged drywall and glue stuck all over the wall. :(
But most importantly, the refrigerator, range, and dishwasher are now installed! Now we just have the microwave left, and then that backsplash will need some attention.