Strike number two in the kitchen renovation!  I ordered a new stove and dishwasher as part of the November black Friday madness.  Instead of waiting for them to arrive after the new cabinets go in I’ll do them early.  To some extent this doubles my work as I will have to uninstall these in a few weeks when the renovations start.  While that isn’t ideal, this lets me work out the process and guarantees I have the right parts on hand.

The two patients to be worked on are a very old chef magic dishwasher and a GE slide in glass top stove.  The dishwasher was rusting out and had a broken soap door when I bought the house 7+ years ago.  I thought it would die soon, but it has held on!  The oven is decent, but the top was scratched badly (not by me).  It worked well aside from a somewhat expensive touch board failure a few years back.

Off with their heads as it were!  Well first I was able to run one final load of dishes before the delivery guys came.  Just in case I spent a long time getting them all installed, I would at least have clean dishes.

First comes the unwrapping and the very careful reading of instructions.  Or rather the unwrapping and the smelling of new appliances.  Instructions would only come when I was really really stuck!

They really do look gorgeous!  The stove was the first one to go.  I had already pulled the old one out a few times for measurements and such.  The cord swap went quickly, and after some cleanup and feet leveling I was able to shove the new one home.  It is a good thing I got these now, the front overhang is slightly different.  My old stove covered the countertop a bit differently and it leaves some edges exposed.  This would be a problem, but we are getting new everything, and the countertops will be fitted to this stove.  Good thing I acted now.

Next came a perplexing game of “figure out how dishwashers are installed”.  The plumbing was pretty straight forward, but the electrical turned out to be an issue.  It is barely long enough to reach the front panel let alone let you pull the unit out past an inch or so.  I eventually worked everything out and got the old girl to the street corner where she belongs.  The new one went in slowly but without major incident.  I barely have enough power cord, so a modification of the permanent electrical system is in order.

For anyone working on this kind of thing, I highly recommend stubby wrenches.  Much better for getting into those tight places under the dishwasher.  Like installing the adapter for the water supply.  Got lest than 6 inches of wrench room?  No problem for a stubby!

The new appliances are wonderful.  The dishwasher is very quiet and cleans a thousand times better than the previous junker.  The stove has a lot more cook top flexibility, and gets hotter faster than the other.  It even managed to get through a 7 dish Thanksgiving baking session without spilling anything!  Now if I could just get the rest of the kitchen to catch up to these two beauties I would be all set.