Dishwasher Debacle

In order finalize our kitchen design back in the spring, we needed to order all our new appliances.  As you may remember, we settled on Frigidaire for our fridge, range and dishwasher. 

The stainless steel appliances looked nice and sleek.  And, they seemed to be the best for not showing fingerprints.

Sadly, we learned pretty quickly that we had made a mistake by selecting the Frigidaire dishwasher.  Had we done a bit more research in advance, we would have discovered the major design flaw that makes this dishwasher so bad. 

Most dishwashers have small vents at the top or bottom that allow the steam to escape when the dishwasher is in the dry cycle.  The Frigidaire dishwasher does not.  This means that the steam is forced out the sides of the dishwasher door, causing condensation to build up on the kitchen cabinets beside the dishwasher.  The condensation drips down the cabinet doors to the floor.

After less than a month of use, the condensation already started to damage our brand new kitchen by causing the paint to peel on the cupboards! 

Once we discovered the problem, we did some searching on the internet and found that we weren’t the only people to have these issues.  There were even entire blogs dedicated to it!

We knew we couldn’t keep using a dishwasher that was going to damage our cupboards and floors, so we began the long and tedious process of getting it replaced.

We started by calling Frigidaire, but had no luck even getting them to answer the phone.

Next, we moved on to the Brick – where we purchased all our appliances – and called the salesperson who we originally dealt with.  He told us we needed to call the Brick’s warranty department, who would send someone out to service the dishwasher. 

After the first service visit, we were told that the dishwasher was installed incorrectly.  We repositioned it, tried again, and continued to have the same problem. 

We called the Brick again for another service visit (even though we knew the dishwasher wasn’t actually broken or installed incorrectly – just poorly designed!) and this time the service technician could clearly see that the condensation was causing steam damage to the surrounding cabinets.

After numerous phone calls and weeks of waiting, the Brick finally agreed to provide us with a store credit so that we could replace the dishwasher with a new one of our choice. 

In the meantime, we made sure we protected our cabinets and floor while we continued to use the dishwasher.  Our set-up looked ridiculous, but was the best we could do!

This time, we made sure to do lots of research before settling on a new Bosch dishwasher:

While more expensive than the Frigidaire, the Bosch gets excellent reviews and still has the clean, sleek look we want.  The Bosch arrived today, but we haven’t had a chance to install it yet because we were busy watching Canada win the gold medal hockey game!  We’ll post a review of our new dishwasher once we’ve had a chance to use it.

Trim and Touch Ups

It’s been pretty quiet over here because we’ve spent the last few weeks doing some less-than-exciting work around the house.  Without any major deadlines, everything seems to take a whole lot longer.

After moving in, a big pile of baseboards sat in our living/dining room while we were busy with other priorities.  But, with the kitchen finished and most of our stuff unpacked, we knew it was time to get moving on the rest of the trim work.

Using the saw outside is a little less fun this time of year, but Dave braved the wind chill to get it done.

Once all the trim was installed, caulked and painted, we turned our attention to patching up the nicks and gouges in the walls. As careful as we were, bumping the walls was inevitable!

This seemingly minor trim work takes a huge amount of time.  And while it isn’t the type of work that people tend to notice – unlike a new kitchen, bathroom tiles or hardwood floors – it does make our house look complete.

So, that’s what we’ve been up to over here.