Those Dishes Aren't Going to Wash Themselves

We love our new-to-us, 1920's bungalow. The kitchen? Yeah, not so much. It's small, the stove is old, the sink is scratched-up, and the most important thing of all...

There was no dishwasher.

Okay, let me rephrase that: there was no dishwasher in the kitchen. One did actually come with the house, but it's one of those that wheels around and was hanging out in what we call the "addition" (aka: the all-purpose laundry/office/etc. room). Neither of us were too keen on going into a different room to load and unload dishes, so we knew the first quasi-major renovation we'd have to do to the house before we moved in was to install a dishwasher.

To those inquiring minds, yes, we have thought about gutting the kitchen and completely redoing it before moving in. However, to take a page from Young House Love, we'd like to wait until we've been living there for at least a year or longer to get a good idea of how we use the space and what would work best for us before taking the sledge to it. That, and we'd have to save up quite a bit of moolah before taking on anything too drastic at the moment.

But, for now, a dishwasher and some new cabinetry should do. And a new sink. And a new faucet.

....trust us, it's a LOT cheaper to do it this way. Promise. ;)

Here are a couple of "before" shots, for reference:

The kitchen (not a great shot of the cabinetry, but at least you get an idea of what we were dealing with). One of the next projects on our list will be to add upper cabinets, but the dishwasher is a bit more important at this stage.

And here's the wheel-y dishwasher in the addition (aka: the Rolling Black Cube of Death), which we'll attempt to pawn off on Craigslist:

Since I was battling a wicked bad cold that I caught in tandem with that stomach flu I had last week, Brian did a majority of the work. That, and I'm not nearly as handy as he is, so I trust him a lot more when it comes to stuff like this. I just served as moral support/documenter/small-person-who-could-fit-under-the-cabinets-when-he-needed-something-done-there.

It took a bit more work than anticipated to get the bottom cabinets out since they were glued to the wall. I mean, is this a thing? Who does this? We know it wasn't the people we bought it from since the cabinetry is pretty old... We obviously got them out, but took some doing.

After the old cabinetry was removed, we made a run to Menards to get some more supplies like copper coils and drain piping and whoosies and whatsies and doodads. That took awhile, mostly because Brian was taking full advantage of the fact that Owen was not with us (a couple of good friends of ours graciously watched him so we could get this done). Not having a toddler with us meant we could take our time instead of rushing through the store because he's hungry/tired/cranky/wants to run and scream like a crazy banshee.

Oh, and we also got a replacement cabinet to go next to the dishwasher, in a smaller size. We got an unfinished one because it was about half the price of a finished one, which is just ducky for us because I know how to stain wood correctly (see: West Elm Shelf Hack).

Here's a shot during:

It's not quite there yet, but it will be in the next couple of weeks or so because, um, we need a kitchen. We still need to stain the cabinet, put a board up next to the dishwasher to protect it from the stove, and put the stove back. But yeah, almost there!