Redneck Remodel

Most of those that read this know me and know that I bought the house that Matt and I now share 3.5 yrs ago when I moved to Chattanooga. As soon as I bought it, I had 2 main remodeling goals: bathroom & kitchen. Well, I bought it with one of those horrible ARMs and did an 80-20 split to finance the down-payment. It's not that I had bad credit or couldn't afford the house, I just had NO credit. I used the 2 yrs to build my credit and I was one of the lucky ones who was able to refinance and get out from under the ARM before the bottom fell out. When I did, I payed off my credit cards and got some cash back for the bathroom remodel. That was fall 2007.

Well, all that was left was the kitchen, and we all know that kitchens are WAY more hassle and expense to remodel. The main reason (other than the totally non-functional design) is the fact that I had no dishwasher. This is the first place I have EVER lived without a dishwasher, and it happens to be the first home I ever purchased. UGH. Well, it was a pain but it wasn't THAT big of a deal when I was single. I cooked 2-3 times per week, not too many dishes - I could stay on top of it pretty well. I still haven't figured out how you go from 1 person to 2 people in a house and the dishes and laundry multiply by FIVE. This baffles me. I know that I cook about 3-4 times a week, but it seems the dishes have multiplied like freakin' rabbits.

Matt has been unhappy with the dish situation since about week 3 post-honeymoon. UM, HELLO 3.5 YEARS!!! And now that he is in school and can't help with the house work as much, he feels extremely guilty working on school work while I clean (isn't that sweet?). So the other day, he had a genius idea. If we got rid of our washer and dryer, bought the kind that you can stack, then we could put a dishwasher in the space where the washer was and let them all share the water lines and drain pipe. We crunched the numbers and figured out that we could swing it, so we started shopping around and researching the fabulous Energy Star front loading washers and dryers (SWEET, just in time for Earth month!).

Our friends Daniel and Meghan were given a new dishwasher by her grandparents when they got married, and their old one has been sitting in the garage for over a year with no place to put it. We spent date night pricing the W/D we wanted (we are SO blessed to have a Sears outlet store here, it's like scratch and dent appliances for way cheaper) and buying all the fittings and hoses to hook up the dishwasher. We wanted to make sure that the set up worked before we dropped the $$ for the W/D. We got everything hooked up on Saturday for the dishwasher, did the test run, watched and prayed... DOH! That SOB leaked! (Incert explatives here).

Well, by this time we were SO excited and had our hearts SET on getting a dishwasher into the kitchen, we had to get a new one! So we went BACK to the Sears outlet store; paid for our new W/D and dishwasher, loaded the dishwasher in the back of Matt's Eclipse (yes it was funny, no I don't have pictures), and came home. WOOHOO, this is gonna happen! Not so fast. We get the dishwasher in place, leveled with lines connected, and open the door... CRASH. Well, not crash, but the dishwasher is so front heavy that it came flying toward us, back off the ground, and drawers sliding out. This freestanding dishwasher was harder than we thought. So, still wanting to make this happen, this is what we came up with...

Yep, the clips that normally get drilled into the countertop were used to anchor it to the wall with caribeaners and cable running through an eye-screw-thingy (that's a technical term, look it up) screwed into a stud. Matt tested the cable and it holds up his weight, so we assume it will hold a diswasher full of dishes! YES, it is rigged, and NO I DON'T CARE!! I don't ever have to wash dishes by hand again (except for china and pots and pans like everyone else).

After church today, our SWEET friend Daniel gave up his afternoon to help us haul off the old dishwasher to the dump and pick up our W/D with his truck! Then he stayed around to help us hook it all up because he bought a set similar to ours when he moved in to his house.

So, without further ado (drumroll, please), our redneck remodel...


Checkout the waterlines and drain rig:


Please don't call building codes on us (although I wouldn't have done this if I didn't think it was safe). This is only a temporary fix. We plan to do a TOTAL kitchen remodel, maybe even take down a wall, in a year or so. This will just get us by until then, so that dishes don't rule our lives. Daniel had a great idea of hanging a shelf or two for laundry stuff and, putting up a spring rod with a curtain to hide "the rig". I think we are going to do that in a few weeks (after Matt's semester is over). WOOHOO!!!