Installing a dishwasher

[littleweedontheprairie]

Hello everyone,
We have been in our house for 2 years. The kitchen doesnt have a dishwasher. It's not an absolute need, but with the family growing it's increasingly inconvenient (I spend likely more than an hour each day washing dishes).
So, we'd like to install a dishwasher.
We've got one (bought gently used for 50 bucks from friends who were moving).
I think I can handle the plumbing.
Adding an electrical circuit for it should be ok as well (I just need to get over my fear of going in the crawl space amid spiders 😜)
What intimidates me most is the " carpentry " work. Removing a cabinet underneath the counter to make room, and finding a narrower (matching!) cabinet to fit next to the dishwasher.
Any advice on shopping for one single cabinet ? I wouldnt mind just putting in open shelving as long as it doesnt look shabby.
Any other advice regarding plumbing and electrical?
Is this a job feasible in one day?

Thanks for your help!

[lthenderson]

Removing the cabinet underneath may be the hardest task of this project depending on several things like countertop material and how the cabinet was adhered to the countertop. You may end up cutting the cabinet in pieces if you can't lift up on the countertop (for fear of cracking it if stone) and it is adhered with a mastic. But cutting it into pieces, you can then pull the parts adhered to the bottom side of the countertop down instead of straight out.

Finding a narrow cabinet that matches the style and finish will most likely be impossible unless it is a brand new house. There are places that will make custom doors so if you get one the right size, you can swap out doors. It still leaves you with matching the finish though. Assuming you have a standard 24" dishwasher and say put it in a spot where a 30" cabinet was, I think I would just build out the sides of the adjacent cabinets three inches each and put a three inch filler board on each side of the dishwasher to fill the gap rather than try and fill a 6 inch gap on one side.

The last several dishwashers I have installed have had great step by step installation guides that if followed make the process go smoothly. Since you are installing one where there wasn't one before, the hardest parts will be plumbing in the water and drain lines along with the electrical. Assuming you are draining it to the sink drain, make sure you have a hole saw kit with a variety of standard sized hole saws to aid in cutting holes through the cabinet sides.

[Car Jack]

Having installed my own dishwasher as a replacement....after kicking out the incompetent sears guy who missed 2 mounting screws on the old dishwasher and was going to cut into the sub floor.......  Look at everything and understand the mounting of the new dishwasher and understand where any electrical hook ups will be.  The first thing I did was to take the water supply hose and throw it out.  I bought a nice, high pressure hose and used that.  Why?  Because in 5 years, I really don't need to have a flood in my kitchen because a 10 cent hose burst. 

Other than that, all I can say is that it isn't rocket science.

[Papa bear]

Great advice above about removing the cabinets. 

What is your countertop and how big of an area do you have? 

Electrical - technically, a dishwasher requires it’s own dedicated circuit.  Are you planning on running a new home run back to the panel? Or are you just going to pull off some other existing outlet?  Before it was required that it needed its own circuit, it was common for the DW and disposal to share 1 circuit.

Supply Plumbing - do you have shut off valves under the sink?  You need to be able to T off of the hot water with another 1/2” to 3/8” shut off.  So if it’s copper, you may have some sweating to do. 

Waste Plumbing - relatively easy. You do need to run the flex line through the cabinet, so best to buy a hole saw and make a nice clean cut.  Do you have a disposal? If you do, before you attach the flex line with a hose clamp, make sure you take out the plug! If you don’t have a disposal, you will need to replace the trap under the sinks to allow for a DW connection.

If you don’t have much experience with doing this, this would NOT be a 1 day project.  I would imagine for a first timer, this would be over 3 days and what I’d call a 4 tripper.  That means you would have 4 trips back and forth to the hardware store to buy stuff you didn’t know you needed.

For me that’s done this a dozen times? Depending on how hard it would be to run mechanicals (electric could be a pain in the ass to do properly) I would give myself about 6 hours and I’d probably need just about every one of my toolboxes.  You need to be able to do plumbing, electric, and carpentry. 


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