Gotta wash those dishes...

Well, I didn't think that 4 months after moving in to a practically new house that we'd have to replace an appliance. But I had noticed that our dishwasher was emitting a less than lovely smell. Before I knew it was broken I even had my mom do a "smell" test. It smelled fishy and totally made me want to hurl my cookies. Seriously took a pregnancy test because I thought my senses were heightened. I have an incredible sniffer when I'm pregnant. No new babies for us. Just a stinky dishwasher.

Our house was built in 2007 but wasn't lived in until 2010. All the appliances are dated 2007, but we're assuming they weren't plugged in since these houses were a builder short sale (typically short sales don't have utilities on). So that makes their "life" only 4 years old.

We figured out that the old dishwasher wasn't properly draining. And when the cycle was finished there was a cloudy puddle in the bottom of the tub. Overshare? Sorry.

So to youtube we went. There were some GREAT resources that we came across. But after disassembling the whole thing and "troubleshooting" we couldn't find anything wrong (no pieces broken, no food stuck in any of the pipes, etc) . We figure it must be a faulty drain pump, but we weren't 100% sure. Most articles we came across said a faulty pump would make a loud sound but ours didn't. We didn't know anything was wrong except for the cloudy puddle of water and the smell.

A new drain pump was going to run us $40, plus if that didn't work we'd be looking at another $100+ to have someone out. We both agreed that since we didn't know the history of the dishwasher (was it over or underused?) a new one was the way to go.

I researched prices at different places and Lowes kept being the forerunner with the best prices. That's not always the case, but it was this time. I found this beauty:

It was a toss up between these 2. Obviously the cheaper one was more tempting, but there were more incentives with the slightly more expensive one. Also I really wanted a quiet one with decibels as low as we could afford. The cheaper one was 55 decibels and the one we settled on was 53 decibels.

It was originally $600 (well $599) and it was 28% off for just a few days. Once I added it to my cart the price lowered to $431. Then you added tax, but took off 10% more for military discount and our total ended up being right at $400 (closer to $406 but same difference). Also we sold our old dishwasher on an online local yard sale for $40 and disclosed that it had issues. We have NO DOUBT it could have been fixed, but we just don't have the time or know how to be able to fix it. And we really didn't want to sink alot of $$ into it not knowing. So maybe someone got a great deal?! Heck we were thrilled that we got $40 for trash instead of it being hauled to the dump. Not bad for the total price of $366!

We decided to have them deliver and install (for an extra $125) it since Josh threw out his back, but once the installer called me and said it was going to be 2 extra weeks before they could get anyone out and flippantly said "I'm not sure how bad you NEED it, but we can always tell Lowes you need a different installer." It had already been a week without a dishwasher. Yeah, no offense but to me this is a need. All my fellow mamas know that 2 weeks without a dishwasher is basically the same thing as being stranded on a desert island with a toddler and a puppy, without food. That wasn't happening. Plus, even though my middle name IS grace, I'm not very graceful when it comes to handwashing and drying on granite... this was a casualty :(  my favorite glass pitcher.

After a few heated calls back and forth to Lowes (we didn't have the greatest sales rep int he world) we decided to drop installation, and we opted for the free delivery- next day. So the delivery guys actually delivered on a Sunday. Wahoo!!

And we had never installed a dishwasher before but it was pretty straightforward. Thankfully our house has water shut off valves right at the sink and we flicked the electricity off at the breaker for the install. Also the old dishwasher had the (for lack of a better word) "dirty water pipe" leading out at the top of the cabinet, which didn't make sense gravity wise. So we drilled a new hole (inside the cabinet) at the bottom. I really think that's going to help alot with the draining.

And like all good nervous DIYers we stuck around for its first cycle just to make sure nothing blew up or leaked everywhere.