Before we get too far, here's a picture of the installed and perfectly functional dishwasher:
Looks good, doesn't it? It's really nice. It's cleaning our dishes very well, and it's very quiet while it's doing so. our last dishwasher was so loud you couldn't have a conversation in the kitchen while it was on. It also tended to scatter food particles around rather than doing anything helpful with them, so that was fun. I'm very pleased with this one, though. I just hope we can figure out what to do with it when the time comes to install the tile floor. It barely fits under the counter as it is, adding another quarter inch or so might be an impossibility. We'll just have to see when the time comes, I guess.
So there's that. It looks good, I think. I'm still not a big fan of the cabinets themselves, color-wise, but they'll have to do. I am absolutely enamored with the little rolly drawers, though. We just heard back that we'll be getting our new cabinet and I'm thinking I may put in another order with them for some more rolly drawers. They just make all the cabinets so much more useful, and make getting things into and out of them so much faster, I'm having a hard time figuring out how I lived without them.
We're also one step closer to having the kitchen all the way done as of last night with the installation of our new garbage disposal. We had an In-Sink-Erator badger 5 which is supposed to be a pretty beastly disposal from what I've read. It was just broken from the start, and rather than trying to figure out how to repair a 10-year old disposal, I figured I'd drop a new one in there. Also, it was a good opportunity to give it MORE POWER. You know how I like that.
Here's the old one with the drain pipes pulled out:
Make sure you put a bucket under there before you actually unscrew any of this stuff. There's probably water and gross in there.
Getting this thing out was easily the hardest part of the whole endeavor. Make sure it's unplugged, obviously. If you have a three-screw setup (we did and you probably do too) you'll need to unscrew this retaining ring to get the main piece to drop off. You see the metal ring at the top with those loopy bits on it? You have to turn that to get the main body of the thing to come off of the mount. We had to hit it with a hammer about 70 times to get it to loosen up. Your mileage may vary.
Once it's off, you need to remove the retention ring with a screwdriver and then remove the mounting bracket. Basically, keep taking things off until you get down to just the sink. Then clean the sink around the opening and make sure there isn't any grime in there.
Now, you can go about installing the new one. It should come with everything you need to install it, except some plumber's putty (you may not use any, depending on your sink and your disposal).
Here's the sink ring. It appears that the sink opening is of a standard size, so you shouldn't have to worry about that too much. This one has that rubber gasket that you can use instead of plumber's putty. Yours may or may not have that, so pay attention to your installation instructions.
Look how pretty!
These go underneath and squeeze the drain hole thing down to the sink so it forms a seal and doesn't rotate around or anything.
The installation of this thing was seriously easy. Once you get to this point, you're really almost done.
This type of mount is known as the "Easy Mount" system, and it involves a lot less futzing and hammering than the other. The metal ring here is held on by a rubber gasket. The disposal hooks into it and that's the entirety of the connection. It's much simpler than the other, with a lot fewer parts. It also requires no tools to install, which is pretty neat.
And there she is. We still need to reattach the drain lines, but the disposal itself is hooked up.It's not the same shape (or size, look at that monster!) so the drain pipes will need to be adjusted.
This part is a little tough to describe. You have to hold all the pipes up to get a rough idea of how long they need to be so they'll all match up. We attached this one (it was new since the old one was too short) and then matched everything up with it to make it all flow. This part comes out of the other sink, and the the horizontal pipe from the disposal hooks up with a neat little joint piece right here.
This is the joint piece. It keeps water from flowing from the left sink into the disposal, and it keeps disposal water from flowing into the left sink. Cool system, really. Then we tie in the p-trap and everything looks good on this side.
This is the horizontal pipe here. I don't know if you can tell, but there's a slight downward angle on it. You want that to make sure everything flows properly.
This is how the horizontal pipe attaches to the disposal. There's a metal plate that screws on and squishes a rubber o-ring to seal the gap.
And that's it! Pretty simple, really. And the thing works like a charm. I can't wait to run stuff down here and see how it does. At this point it drains water, which is more than I can say for the other one. Thanks for reading!
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