Dishwasher - another DIY

So our dishwasher broke down last month and if I had not already said so, we love ours and use it regularly. The dishwasher is such a lifesaver and in our case, it's a no-brainer for us because our hot water cost is already included in our monthly condo fee - not really sure how much the old dishwasher costs us to operate in terms of electricity since it was a dinosaur (20 years old), this new one costs $35 / year to operate assuming you run it 4x a week.

Anyway, losing use of this appliance was such a hardship. We couldn't even use it as a 'drip pan' to drip-dry our dishes because it died in the middle of its wash cycle and it still had a puddle of water at the bottom of the tub which we couldn't completely dry out. Also, since it died mid-cycle, I wasn't up to cleaning the drawers / trays. So on top of having to wash our dishes manually, we also had to air-dry them on our kitchen countertops. It was so difficult to find free space after a while.

The bad news is that we had just replaced our washing machine last month and our wallets aren't quite ready for this on top of the holiday spending for December. The good news is that, apparently, compared to other appliances, dishwashers are pretty affordable and since ours is a standard-sized dishwasher, you could easily get one for as low as $250 or as high as the high $1000 range.

We decided to DIY the installation as it seemed fairly straightforward. We saved ourselves between $90 (handyman fee) and at least $139 (home depot installation fee) or $169 (Sears installation fee) by doing the installation ourselves. It would cost more than $139 or $169 to have it installed professionally because we also needed an electrician to do power hookups.

For this project, I did the wiring and hubby did the plumbing.

Here is the new washer, we will install the footboard (the cover at the bottom of the washer) and remove the plastic sheet on the door & the energy guide sticker after we run it a few times and make sure that there are no leaks.

We've already run a load last night and it ran wonderfully - quiet and efficient.