So we told you about our dishwasher catching on fire, and we have been without one for the past month and a half. After a looking around at a few places, we found ourselves at Nebraska Furniture Mart. We found one that we were interested in, so we went home and did a little bit of research.

I searched the product identification number, and found these reviews at Best Buy and Google Shopping.

After reading through a lot of the comments, we could tell that there wasn’t anything that you would consider an “obvious flaw”. Most of the bad ratings were from people that were using it more than a normal family, some that expected more out of the product, and a few bad units. A pretty “normal” product review.

So we headed back to NFM to purchase it. They had it in stock and delivered it the next day.

The old one was unplugged to keep from catching on fire again. So I shut off the water and removed the copper pipe that ran water to the dishwasher.  After that, I was ready to drain it.

They even hauled the old one away for free after dropping the new one off, one of the perks why we got it delivered instead of taking it home ourselves.

Yes, that is snow on the ground.

Being the DIY type, we decided we could install it ourselves. SPOILER: We learned a few lessons that will save A LOT of time.

Tip 1, assess the current situation with electrical and water hookups. Our dishwasher was hooked up with a copper tube for the water supply and plugged into an outlet for the electrical supply.

This may surprise you, but when you buy a dishwasher, the hookups are not included.  This prompted the first of three trips to Home Depot.  Being thrifty, we were going to try and reuse the copper tube for the water supply, but we needed to buy an elbow connector. We also needed to buy a cord to plug it in with.

I got home and checked the elbow to make sure it was the right size and fit. It wasn’t.

Tip 2, take any connecting pieces with you that you can, and make sure you get the right piece. I needed a 3/8″ OD elbow, but picked up a 3/8″ elbow.

Tip 3, if you plan to re-use old pieces, at least ask someone at the store if there is a better way. After fighting with the copper tube for +4 hours, we were going to buy a new piece of copper tube to fight with when the store associate asked if we would be interested in another type of connection. OF COURSE WE WOULD BE!

We ended up getting a like this one: steel braided supply line kit. It was flexible and easy to install. It came with all of the connectors you would need, and it only took about 20 minutes to finish the job!

Tip 4, be sure to check your water pressure after installing the supply line. You want to make sure you don’t have a leak prior to fulling installing the dishwasher. If there is a leak you want to be able to pull it back out to work on it.

The rest of the installation was pretty simple, level it out with the adjustable legs and screw it into the counter.

I hope these tips will save you some time and frustration. Let me know if you run into anything weird and want to bounce questions off of someone.