Things We Spent Money on For Our House to Prevent Divorce, Part I: The Dishwasher

Happy Labor Day! Let's talk about how I don't want to do labor.

So, as I have stated before, our house did not have a dishwasher when we purchased it. As a matter of fact, there wasn't even a space in the cabinetry where one would expect a dishwasher would go.  I have chronic dermatitis on my hands that really does make doing the dishes a problem for me.  We had some trouble finding a handyperson who would be able to do the job because, well, people weren't returning our calls.

Eventually Dr. BB got a guy out and he estimated that he could do the job for $1000-$2000.  This is kind of a big range of prices, but I was actually figuring about $3000 in the budget, so this seemed right, especially once we factored in the price of the appliance (and we went ahead and put in a garbage disposal at the same time).  In the meantime, what you need to know is that Dr. BB was doing the dishes. He really was. He just wasn't doing them WHEN I WOULD. I hate having cluttered countertops and he, as the person doing dishes, didn't like piled up dishes in the sink, so we stacked dishes next to the sink and then he'd do all the dishes before going to bed which meant THE DISHES WERE ON THE COUNTER ALL DAY. 

I was able to handle this because I knew it was temporary, but if this situation would have gone on much longer, I would either currently have no skin on my hands because I would have just started doing the dishes and/or one of us would have accidentally harmed the other. 

We ended up getting a dishwasher from a local store that delivered it to our house for no charge. Things we wanted in a dishwasher included controls on the front because Dr. BB's dad has one with controls in the door and EVERYBODY forgets to start it and you sometimes forget it's running and open it and then it starts over the entire cycle and I am traumatized by Dr. BB's dad's dishwasher and a sanitize cycle (Dr. BB's food issues are intense).  We ended up getting a standard 24" front control Maytag dishwasher for $521.28. We really just bought the disposal the handyperson told us to get which was a Badger 3/4 HP (whatever that means).

Also, clearly I was making popcorn when I took this. Whatever! Dishwasher!

 Then he came on July 28 with an assistant and he put in a dishwasher. This was actually quite a process that involved cutting parts of our cabinetry and doing some plumbing that led to a leak that led to buckets in the basement, but it was eventually all sorted out and there was a dishwasher! and a garbage disposal!  He charged us $1200 for the whole thing, which, honestly, I thought was a true bargain.

And that is how we didn't get divorced in the first month we lived here.