Dishwasher and Island

I've been meaning to post pictures of our remodel forever but there is always some other catching up to do on other posts. But one of our latest additions has me very excited.

We finally have a dishwasher!!

Actually, we have had a dishwasher since last July when we bought it with our new fridge.

Ta Da! It's a little big for the space but we will redo the kitchen...someday.

But back to the dishwasher - we went on vacation and moved out for 7 months so it was just sitting in our garage all that time. I can't even explain how much time it took me to wash our dishes and how much space those dishes took up (whether dirty or clean) and how I struggled to make dinner because I was low on counter space because the dishes were taking up valuable real estate or how if I got behind on one meal, the kitchen looked like a disaster with all the dirty dishes and we would go out to eat because I couldn't make dinner with no room and in such a mess. So yeah, the dishwasher has been a huge blessing. And to top it off, it's such a pretty dishwasher without a million buttons on front for tiny hands to press and cancel the wash. I specifically wanted a dishwasher where the buttons were on the top and it just happened that this was in the same set as my fridge (which I also love) and very reasonably priced. So the nice thing about buying such a crappy house with crap appliances is replacing them with ones that you really love.

We did have to be a little, ahem, creative with the installation. Because there was no dishwasher in the kitchen before, we had to make a space for it. And it didn't fit as well as we had hoped into the space we chose so we had to chisel out some tile floor and base molding and remove a bunch of drawers and cut away some of the cabinet with the sawzall. So it's not the prettiest thing (we'll remodel our kitchen some day), but people, I have a freaking dishwasher, FINALLY! You totally take for granted these things until you don't have them. And I swear, I thank Brandon almost daily for installing it (we did have a plumber come and do the hook-ups for us though but Brandon did a great job on the actual installation and getting it to fit). And seriously, it wasn't as expensive as I thought. And so worth it.

The only problem was what to do with all those drawers filled with things we needed like cutlery and utensils? Well, for a while (like weeks), we just piled them on top of our kitchen table.

Not the most ideal place, but hey, I had a dishwasher so I could deal with anything.

But Brandon couldn't. So he bought us one of these:

A nice little island to put all that stuff in. And it gives us a little extra prep space.

It does block off some lower cabinet space but since the island has wheels, the stuff is still somewhat accessible.

And we just removed the cabinet door to make it even more accessible. Not the perfect solution but the best one we can come up with without completely remodeling our kitchen.

But at least I got rid of this stupid thing:

Next up, new matching stove and microwave...someday. The ones we currently have are still working, unlike our old fridge which we had to keep shut with tape. Ahh, the joys of remodeling an old house!