No More leaning towers of dishes....

Throughout our lifetime, we will encounter responsibilities that will never go away. If we are lucky, we will be able to pass those responsibilities onto someone else. But the odds of that are extremely slim…The responsibilities that I am referring to are household tasks that never go away. As a youth, household tasks were usually delegated due to a punishment and/or a source of allowance. Some of the household tasks that never go away are laundry, dishes, trash removal, and mopping. I personally believe that most of the tasks mentioned are minimal in time to accomplish…But are needed to satisfy our cleanliness meter... I mean, to be honest we really don’t have to clean anything, but people would start to talk… There is one task that I truly dislike. That responsibility is dishes. Here is an example how much I hate dishes… As a teenage I actually had quit a job because I was scheduled to wash pots and pans for 8 hours straight. I could not deal with the soggy factor, thus I quit…


I honestly dislike the dish pan hands after spending 20 minutes of washing. Additionally the wasted time spend standing over a sink of dirty dishes. My problem is that I enjoy cooking. I would cook a large meal and have an excess amount of dishes. To be honest, I would be ok with cooking, if someone else did the dishes. However, I live alone in this house, but that is truly another story….

I have to admit that my dish washing quality is really not up to standards… I mean I fall short of the 100% cleaning mark by half. It’s completely embarrassing to offer someone a drink and realize a spot of muck on the glass. So when the installation of the dishwasher was next on the list, my motivation was extremely high… I was even more motivated when I realize that the dishes were piling higher and were beginning to fester something frightening.

Prior to installing the dishwasher, I had to cut an access hole into the side of the sink base cabinet. I then had to adjust the existing electrical outlet closer to the dishwasher access hole. When I installed the sink, I purposely installed the drain line for the dishwasher, so I would only need to install the dishwasher drain directly. Surprisingly the manufacturing dishwasher instructions were extremely easy to follow.

For the dishwasher, since I didn't want to hard wire directly to the power, I decided to install a 3 prong plug that came with the dishwasher. I figured in case of emergency, it would be easier to disconnect the dishwasher power without any true issues. I also changed the existing plug with a GFI (also known as GFCI) which means Ground Fault (Circuit) Interrupter.

Whenever electricity is used in a damp location, a minor fault can cause a dangerous shock even though the circuit is properly grounded, thus a GFI is used to interrupt that shock. Basically, a GFI outlet monitors the current flowing through both the hot and neutral wires. If there is a difference between them that usually means an external source is causing a current differential. That external source causing the differential is usually a person. The GFI watches for this difference and shuts off power to the circuit if an imbalance is detected.

When wet, you become a conductor and the GFI will detect the current flowing through you and shut the power off. A normal breaker will only shut off if your body happens to overload the circuit, the odds of you overloading the circuit is unlikely.

So let’s get to the point. So prior to installing the dishwasher, I wrote a little note on the wall… I figured someday someone would want to revamp the kitchen as well. This will at least give them an idea when it was last updated.

Here is the dishwasher installed prior to actually using it.

You will note the cluttered counter top with the dish rack.

Now look at the counter without the clutter… Nice, I’m extremely pleased with the new look. So now the dishwasher is installed. Next on the list will be to paint the walls and upper cabinets in the kitchen. Then install the new floor…That is it for now… until next, happy building…