I watch a LOT of House Hunters, and similar home buying
shows. I always laugh when buyers, him
and hah, and sigh about the old appliances, and how much it will cost to make
them match or to update them. I never get this. The appliances are used when
you move in, go on craigslist and buy used appliances. Who cares if your
appliances are used by your previous tenants, or by someone else?
When we moved in there was a really old really ugly fridge
in the kitchen. I loved Stainless Steel French Door fridges. I found one on
Craigslist in great shape for $600. (When Craigslist trolling, patience and persistence
are key!) The previous owners wanted new colors in their kitchen, it wasn’t
very old, it came out of Bellevue. I was able to sell the old ugly one for $150
on CL, so paying $450 for a fairly new fridge? Not bad in my book!
Next on the list: The stove. I love double ovens, I knew there
was nowhere in my kitchen for wall mounted ones. I had plenty of cupboard space, so I didn’t
need the drawer under the stove. I found a 3 year old 5 burner stove with double
ovens for $465. It was white, which was
fine with me. Our build in Microwave is white, actually most of our kitchen is
white: Counters, Wainscoting, Cupboards, Sink, Door, and Trim. I didn’t feel that the black accents that are
always part of Stainless steel stoves would look good in our kitchen anyways,
so I didn’t care about having some stainless, some white. I sold the old one
for $175, so $290 for an extra burner and oven, fine by me!
Finally, the one thing I have wanted for SOOOO long. A
DOUBLE DRAWER DISHWASHER. New these
things can be thousands of dollars. Used, even they are normally at least $500.
One night, before we had moved out of the Rental, I was doing my nightly scan
of craigslist. I found a Fisher Paykel Dishwasher for $50!!! It was 9:30pm at
night, my timing strikes again! I told
Patrick, and he said “call the guy right now!”, I thought it was too late to
call. We went back and forth again, and he won. I called 5 minutes after the
guy posted it, we got the address, and we were in Issaquah in the El Camino by
10:15pm. The guy was in panic mode
moving out of his house that had just sold. The buyer wanted all of the
appliances to match. I never get that.
What do you think the seller is going to do when you ask that? Of course if
half of it is white, and half of it is stainless, the they are going to go out
and buy the cheapest white appliances in they can find. How does that help you
in the long run? Instead of getting a
house with this $2000 stainless steel dishwasher, you got a cheap plastic one
that will break in 3 years. The guy also
had a garage door issue, and Patrick’s Dad’s company does garage doors. Patrick
worked on them for 7 years, he could have fixed the issue in about 10 minutes,
and we would have gotten the dishwasher for free. If you have a trade skill,
you can often times leverage it! We should have asked, or brought his tools
with us. We’ve swapped furnace servicing and a new thermostat, and many other
things for Patrick helping people out with those kinds of projects.
We love love love our dishwasher. We sold the old one for
$100, so we netted +$50 on that one. We didn’t know that you have to install
them a special way, you can’t use liquid detergent, and you can’t load them
with anything sticking up above the edge of the drawer (even if the drawer
closes), or it can flood. About a week
after we installed it we woke up at 3:00am to the dishwasher beeping and making
all kinds of noises. I got out of bed, hit the power button to turn it off, and
went back to bed. A few minutes later it
was back at it again. This time Patrick got up and turned it off, then groggily
padded back to bed. Again, it turned on. This time we opened the drawer,
thinking that would fix it. No luck. At this point we were beginning to think
that our new house was possessed.
Finally we killed the breaker (a fun feat since none of them are labeled
correctly), and the next morning I researched the error code that had been
flashing on it. Sure enough, it was a flooding error. Luckily in all of my searches for the Double
Drawer Dishwashers, I had seen an ad for a reasonably priced repair guy. I
emailed him and let him know what happened.
A week later the guy showed up. A nice younger guy, probably
in his mid-thirties, who used to train the Sears Appliance Repairmen on how to
do their job. He charged $65 for import appliances
and $55 for domestic. He taught us how
to take the whole dishwasher apart with a butter knife, a straw, and a pair of
needle nose pliers. He taught us how to
take care of it, where to get parts and how to install them if need be, and how
to properly install the dishwasher itself. It turns out that all Fisher
Paykel Dishwashers are built the same
from when they first started doing these double drawer ones. All of the parts
are interchangeable, so we could order parts for a 2014 dishwasher, and it
would fit our older model. Often times over the years they make improvements to
the parts to make them last even longer.
About a month ago one of our motor pieces died. Thanks to our repairman’s
lesson, Patrick was able to remove the old part, and I ordered the new one. For
$135 with tax and shipping, we had a better than before dishwasher. Yes, that
was a little painful to pay, but over all we’re still only up to net -$200 on
the new dishwasher. It’s completely worth it, and we recommend it to anyone
that has a small family or lives alone. We LOVE that you can run the two
drawers independently, and they are very water efficient.
Lesson: Keep an eye on craigslist, a lot of times you can
find almost new appliances for half the cost if people have to move and are in
a hurry. I’ve been watching for our new
washer and dryer, but I can’t bring myself to pay $600-$800 on the main basis
that they are prettier. I think in
trips, that’s at least one and a half trips to Victoria, BC! Not worth it! J
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