Let the dishes wash themselves.

Happy Saturday! Bradley’s busy working on a project today while I’m busy recovering from the flu. It’s been a rough couple of days, but I think all of the chicken soup and couch time has really helped. It seems like all of the ladies in this house are sick right now.

Margot picked up kennel cough at the animal shelter, and she and Jabba were both sick all week. They’ve been good couch companions. And now that Margot’s feeling a little better, she’s starting to come out of her shell.

Life is good! Wait, scratch that. Life is great. You know why?

Because that guy installed our dishwasher! Whee!

Up until recently, our dishwasher was in the garage, piled on top of the old stove we removed when we moved in:

We delayed the installation because we weren’t sure where we would put it. Our plan has always been to refinish the old cabinets in our kitchen. So we thought we’d wait it out until we renovated the kitchen.

After 7 long months of living sans-dishwasher, we’d had enough. We also realized that we don’t want to keep the old cabinets after all. They were cobbled together poorly and they’re basically falling apart. Bradley dismantled the drawer cabinet by hand:

Seriously. He popped them right out with his bare hands. I don’t have a before picture because he was in such a big hurry to get started, but here’s how the cabinet looked with the drawers gone:

Not. Attractive.

We’re not sure we could have kept the old cabinets even if we wanted to. They’re attached right to the plaster. The plaster is just a thin layer right over the brick. So we would have had to remove the cabinets to insulate the walls behind them — and based on how rickety they are, we’re pretty sure they’ll fall apart in the process.

At least the floors look decent:

We’ll have to peel up that hideous linoleum and pry up the plywood underneath. Hopefully the glue didn’t cause too much damage to the kitchen floors.

While removing the cabinets, we noticed that they weren’t as old as we thought they would be:

They’re put together using commercial nails that are newer than the big square nails we’ve found throughout the rest of the house. Either way, removing the drawers has sealed the deal: these cabinets are outta here.

Once Bradley had the drawers removed, he used a hole saw attachment to drill holes for the dishwasher pipes:

The hole saw does exactly what the name implies: it saws a perfect hole.

A hole on the right side for the power cord:

And one on the left for the hoses:

The hoses went into cabinet under the sink where Bradley could plumb them in:

That spot may be my least favorite in the entire house. We’ve cleaned it as much as we can, but it will never stop looking gross. We can’t wait to rip up this cabinet and get rid of everything underneath. Especially the nasty, peeling wallpaper:

Once the wires and pipes were threaded through the holes, Bradley gently pushed the dishwasher into place:

Then he used some spare hunks of wood to make up for the difference between our deep dishwasher and our not-so-deep cabinet:

It’s not the prettiest solution, but it’s very temporary. We’ll rip everything out when we renovate the kitchen anyway.

After that came the plumbing:

And finally, he hooked up the power:

It starts getting dark here at 5:30 now, so Bradley’s been using his camping flashlight headgear to get work done once the sun goes down. One of our neighbors keeps asking him if he’s a coal miner.

The final product:

Ta-da! It’s not pretty, but it’s a temporary fix to our problem. Our problem being that we were both really, really sick of washing dishes by hand. We cook most of our meals at home, so it felt like we were always washing dishes. And standing in front of a sink full of dirty dishes after a long day of renovating or a hard day at work was getting old fast. Now we just load up the dishwasher after dinner and listen to the hum of dishes washing themselves while we watch TV on the couch. Oh, luxury. How we missed you!

We’ll be back soon with another update. Both of us have been crazy-busy with work lately and we’ve gotten a little behind in our posts. Lucky for me, I’ve got a sick day to get all caught up. Stay tuned!

Hot Water Heater

Happy humpday! The week is half over, and we’re still recovering from our work-filled weekend.

We’re on a spending freeze from hardware stores for the rest of the year. We’re taking the time to do odds and ends projects that we’ve been putting off. On Saturday, we installed a hot water heater. And by “we,” I mean Bradley. Because I was off playing with my new favorite toy:

I have a label maker. You know what this means, right? I’m one step closer to becoming a crazy cat lady. I can officially conquer the world. I’ll show you what I did with Labels McGee in our next post. It was exhilarating. I blew my nerd gasket at least twice.

Bradley started out by removing the staircase that leads up to our dining room. We’re sealing up this entrance anyway, so the staircase was a goner anyway. Besides, this guy hasn’t demolished anything in weeks:

He was itching to get his sledgehammer on.

Once the staircase was out of there, Bradley swept up all of the dirt and grime covering the cement floor:

He uncovered a secret message:

March 12, 1949. Which means our basement floor was poured nearly 63 years ago. Yipes. Definitely time for an update, but we won’t get to that until next year.

Next up, Bradley stacked a few cinder blocks in the spot where we wanted the hot water heater to go:

We wanted to elevate the hot water heater just in case we ever get water in our basement again. The cinder blocks are about 8 inches tall, so it gives us a little piece of mind knowing our new water-heating robot won’t drown.

Look at those googly eyes. Cutest robot this basement’s ever seen!

We got our GE GeoSpring back in September and it’s been hanging out in our basement ever since. We got it because it’s one of the most energy-efficient water heaters on the market. And, thanks to a tax credit and a rebate from our electricity company, this puppy cost us only $400.

With the water heater elevated, Bradley got to work on the plumbing.

We’re going to give a brief description of what we did, because a) a long-winded description would put everyone to sleep, and b) the details of what worked for us may not work for every house.

Bradley started by turning off the water main while I turned on all the faucets in the house. This relieved the pressure from the pipes. Next, he shut off our old boiler and started disconnecting the pipes to splice in the hot water heater. He measured out all of his pipes, cut them and then soldered them together:

I asked Bradley what he was doing in the pictures above and this is what he said:

You can say that I was soldering a ball valve. Not a gate valve. Because gate valves suck.

Straight from the horse’s mouth.

He also said that he “tied in the lines” and “spliced in the unit” and “installed a 30-amp breaker for the power feed.” And that, friends, is why I write the blog. Because nobody knows what a power feed splicing unit breaker is. Also, he’s more photogenic. And I have an irrational fear of getting swallowed up by big machines.

In about 3 hours, he had the water heater up and running:

We set it to hybrid mode. This means that it’s going to suck up the warm air from the room and use that to heat the water. It’s also going to use electric coils during peak times.

An added bonus is that it dehumidifies the air in the room. This means our always-muggy basement might finally dry out. And hopefully be less stanky in a few weeks. We’ll keep you posted.

Bradley insulated all of the water pipes in the basement. Here he is putting pipe insulation on the hot water line:

And the cold water line:

This improves efficiency because it keeps the warmth in the hot line and reduces condensation on the cold line.

Bradley also put gaskets around the basement door to help stop drafts:

That’s the only way in and out of the basement now. It needs a little….aesthetic help:

We’ll get to that eventually. Right now, we’re telling ourselves that it looks rustic and quaintly old-fashioned. We like to mix our Kool-Aid with equal parts denial and ignorance. That’s the juice that keeps us going!

We’ll be back soon with more updates on our weekend projects. Stay tuned, peeps.

—

What we learned from this project:

• This is Bradley’s fourth hot water installation, so he didn’t learn anything. Good thing I asked a lot of questions because I learned a lot.
• There might be a little air in the lines, but it’ll pass. Basically this means you might be in the middle of a nice, hot shower and suddenly get blasted with icy cold water. I speak from personal experience when I say this suuuuuucks.
• Before soldering, sand the pipe and the fitting. Shiny pipes are clean pipes. And that helps the solder stick.
• Make sure your pipes are totally drained before you solder. Otherwise it’ll produce steam that will keep the solder from absorbing into the joint.
• Apply flux to both pipe and fitting.
• Use MAPP gas, not propane, when soldering. MAPP gas burns hotter. (It’s the stuff that comes in a yellow tank.)

Getting fired up.

Meet the latest addition to our house:

Lets just go ahead and get this out of the way — the stove looks completely wonky. We didn’t install it ourselves because installation was included in the cost. And we weren’t around for the installation because the only available day was when we were in Brooklyn. The stove installer clearly does not have a discerning eye. Here’s what’s driving us nuts:

• They didn’t center the stove on the metal sheet underneath.
• The face of the stove isn’t level with the brick wall, so it looks cockeyed.
• They didn’t push the stove back far enough.
• The pipes are crooked. (We’re really not sure how they didn’t notice this one.)
• We asked them to not scratch up the metal sheet and they did. And then they tried to cover it up with….grease? Spraypaint? We’re not really sure.
• The paint on the pipes scratched off during installation.

We freely admit that we’re totally OCD control freaks when it comes to this stuff. We’re designers. It’s in our blood. But, seriously, look at how crooked that stove is:

Not OK. So we called up the stove company and complained. At first they tried to brush us off — it’s not that crooked, there were existing scratches on the steel, the paint didn’t scratch off that much — and we had to get a little New York on them.* We insisted they come out and fix the issue. And that we’d write out the check as soon as the stove was installed properly. That sped things right along and they’ll be back this week to fix the problems. Unfortunately while we’re in Brooklyn again, so we’ll see how it goes.

The moral of the story? If you want something done right, do it yourself.
Or suck it up and learn to live with shoddy workmanship. Whatever floats your boat.

Here’s what we’re loving about our new stove:

There isn’t a gaping hole in our brick wall anymore. That’s a huge plus.

It’s got pull-out “wings” that let you keep beverages warm! Coffee is basically the 3rd member of our renovation team, so we were downright giddy when we found out our coffee will never again go cold. Oh, and it’s pretty good at warming up the house, too:

While Bradley worked on getting the fire going, I took a few pictures of some furniture we haven’t shared yet. Check out our new coffee table:

You can see a couple of dining room chairs in the corner as well. There are four more of those stashed in the garage, and we’ll be designing a table to go with them. And then there’s this maple media console:

The coffee table, chairs and console are all from his company in Brooklyn. So is the tray on top of the media console. His boss gave us a generous employee discount and we took full advantage of it. The jute rug and the handles on the console are from IKEA.

The mix of woods feels like a bit much right now — everything is so loud! — but we’re not worried. Most of this furniture won’t live in the same room. It’s just sort of a hodgepodge situation until we can start actually furnishing rooms.

A few weekends ago, our friend Seryi visited us from New York. She brought us some love housewarming presents, including this:

A box of matches with a sketch of Brooklyn! So cute! At the time she said we’d probably never use the matches because they’re pretty obsolete. Joke’s on her. We’ve been using the matches nonstop since we got the stove:

Gotta love a gift that’s both adorable and practical. Thanks, Seryi!

Before we had the fireplace and attic insulation, our house was constantly freezing. We hated using our oil boiler for heat, so we set our thermostat at 59°F. We pretty much just bundled up and learned to live with it.

With the fireplace, we’ve been sitting pretty at a constant 68-70°F. Our boiler no longer kicks on. And, with the insulation, we’re retaining the heat we’re generating. We still have some old windows to replace and a lot more insulating to do throughout the house, so it’s only going to get better from here.

* New Yorkers have this amazing way of letting you know exactly what you did that is bothering them. It’s not rude and it’s not abrasive — it’s just very, very direct. Honest, almost to a fault. Coming from more passive-aggressive parts of the country, this took a little getting used to. And now we’re all about it.

—

Why we went with a fireplace as our main source of heat:

• Lumber’s a renewable resource.
  Oil? Not so much.
• We cut out the corporations and support a local business.
  One of the biggest reasons we went with a wood-burning stove instead of a pellet stove is that we don’t have to go to a big chain store and buy a packaged product. Our firewood guy lives in our town — he’s one of us. And when he delivers a truck-full of wood to our house, we know it hasn’t traveled very far. We love supporting local businesses!
• We have more control over where exactly our wood is coming from.
  You know us control freaks are waaaay into this one. The great thing about buying locally is that we can always source naturally fallen trees (as opposed to trees that are cut down for firewood).
• We can get our own wood if we want.
  We keep seeing ads in the local paper for “free firewood.” This is basically when a tree falls naturally (like during a storm) and the homeowner wants it removed from their property. They let anyone come in with a chainsaw, cut the wood to pieces and take it home for firewood. Bradley’s all over it — I think it’s mostly cuz he’ll take any excuse to use a chainsaw.
• We’re not reliant on electricity for heat.
  Pennsylvania just had a freak snowstorm that left tons of people without power for days. It’s nice to know that if we’re ever in that situation, we won’t rely on electricity for our heat. Bonus: we could actually cook on top of the stove if we wanted.
• It’s cheap!
  We talked to our firewood guy about buying 4 cords of wood. That should be more than enough to get us through winter. Since we’re buying in bulk, he cut us a deal and charged us $120 per cord. That means we’re spending a grand total of $480 to heat our house for the next 4-6 months.
• Nothing beats a fire on a cold, snowy night.
  Hot cocoa. Blanket. And a dog to snuggle with.

There are some downsides to relying on firewood for heat:

• We need a backup heating system.
  We’re in Brooklyn 2 days a week, which means we’re not there to build a fire. With all the insulating we’re doing, our house stays comfortably warm while we’re gone. But just in case it doesn’t, we have our boiler set to turn on if the temps drop below 50°.
• Firewood takes up space.
  It would be kinda tough to rely solely on firewood without having extra space to dedicate just for firewood. We’re basically using our basement solely for wood storage.
• Wood-burning stoves require attention.
  They need some tweaking every 6-8 hours to keep them burning all day. This isn’t a big deal for us because tending fires is totally Bradley’s jam. But it’s definitely not something that everyone would be into.

That’s it. We’ll be back soon with more projects and updates. Stay tuned!

Flashback to June and sneak peak into October.

If you’ve been following the blog pretty consistently, there’s one thing you’ve probably picked up about us: we love a good deal. We also don’t believe in credit cards. Just like we don’t believe in leprechauns, unicorns and pixie magic, we don’t believe in Future Money. That’s our personal philosophy on money, and not a judgement on anyone else’s. We simply think we either have the money for a purchase, or we don’t. So sometimes we decide to make a big purchase and it doesn’t happen until we have the cash-money to pay for it.

Way back in June, we revealed that we wanted a fancy hybrid water heater — one that dehumidifies while saving the energy and the planet. It should really come with a superhero cape.

Source

Fast forward to September and we still hadn’t gotten our water heater. We had 2 very good excuses: 1) we’re crazy busy working on the guest bedroom / office / hallway upstairs so there’s no time for basement work, and 2) we were 67.5% sure it was going to go on sale soon. So we stashed away the dough for later.

Last week, we went into our local hardware store and bumped into Our Guy, known to the rest of the world as Ray. Ray loves Bradley. Bradley loves Ray. I love how his hardware store has free coffee and shiny things to stare at. Ray told us he’d been waiting all day for us to come in because it was time to buy the water heater.

GE just dropped the price by $300 and our electricity company just started offering a $300 rebate on hybrid water heaters. You just fill out a form and they send you a check. And  then there’s the $300 tax credit for buying an energy efficient appliance. Bradley gave Ray a big, fat kiss on the lips (not really), whipped out his wallet, and set up a delivery for this Friday.

Wanna know how much we paid? We’re happy to (over)share.

Original price: $1300
GE sale price: $1000
Minus $300 electric co. rebate: $700
Minus $300 tax credit: $400
Our final price: $400

Yup. We saved ourselves nine. hundred. smackers. Which, coincidentally just happens to be how much our next big purchase is going to cost us in October. (How’s that for a segue?)

We haven’t shared a view of our dining room yet because we haven’t done any work on it (we’re taking it one room at a time). Until now. Feast your eyes on this monstrosity:

Our dining room is currently our living room. And our living room is currently our bedroom. It’s a crazy-mixed-up world we live in. Here’s a breakdown of what we’re looking at:

That Hugh Jass hole in the wall wasn’t always there. It’s actually the first step towards renovating this room while simultaneously reducing our carbon footprint:

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That, my friends, is a wood-burning stove. We’re not sure if that’s the exact one we’re getting. We’re still in the shopping around phase. That one, though, is available at a farm supplier near us for $900 and we’re thinking about going with it.

We’ve been spotting old wood-burners in modern spaces more and more in lieu of brick fireplaces. There’s something about an old-timey cast iron stove that bring so much character to an otherwise modern space. It’s the interior design version of the Emeril Lagasse “BAM!”

So the hole in our dining room’s brick wall was to gain access to the chimney. Our chimney guy is making us a custom chimney liner so we can install a wood-burning stove in our dining room and use it to heat our house. We’ll still have our oil boiler to use as backup — in case the temperature ever drop below 50 degrees inside, our radiators will kick on and heat up the space enough to keep our plumbing from freezing when we’re not home. But for the most part, we plan on using good old-fashioned firewood to heat our home.

So our big purchase for September was the water heater we’ve been coveting and our big purchase for October is the stove / chimney liner / installation.

We’ve already started making a list of all the things we plan on redoing in the dining room:

• Expose the brick wall (the stove will sit in front of raw brick)
• Tear down the ceiling to expose the rafters
• Rip out the carpet, sand + paint the floors
• Make a dining room table
• Make a floor-to-ceiling built-in bookshelf with window seat
• Tear down all the walls, insulate & put up new walls
• Replace 2 windows
• Replace or repair the door to the porch
• Paint the 3 other doors in the room (they lead to the hallway, living room and basement)
• Make a radiator cover

We won’t get started on that for a while. Next on our gut-renovation list: the laundry room / half bath. Then the kitchen. We have our work cut out for us!

What we learned last week:

• It’s good to hold back.
  We have a million purchases we have to make to get our house looking and functioning the way we want. If we tried to make them all at once, we’d be broke. Or worse: in debt.
• Our one room at a time rule helps us keep our sanity, more money in our pockets and a cleaner house.
  If we limit our purchases to only whatever we need to renovate 1 or 2 rooms, we’re not starting projects all over the house and causing construction messes everywhere. We’re also not wasting money and space by hoarding supplies for projects that won’t get started till Spring 2012. Win-win situation.
• Know when to make exceptions.
  The stove and water heater are exceptions to the one room at a time rule. Our old oil boiler is really inefficient and really expensive — and winter is right around the corner. Both purchases also have the added benefit of alleviating our hippie-guilt over being reliant on oil.
• This is not the first wood-burning stove in our house.
  Way back in the 1880s, when our house was a young’un, there was a stove hooked up in the dining room and it was definitely used for cooking. The dining room / living room areas are the “old” part of the house. The kitchen area was added later (we’re thinking the 1920s-30s). So weird to think that someone used to cook their meals where we now watch TV.
• Confession: even though we’re very anti-credit card, we still use ‘em.
  When we  have the cash-money to make our big purchase, we put it on a credit card that gives us airline miles. Then we pay them off right away. Sometimes before it’s even due, because we’re anal like that. We’re saving up miles for a trip after the house is done. (Thailand, here we come??)

The ugliest room in our house.

We’ve publicly shared some pretty hideous features of our house on Bye Bye Brooklyn. No shame in our game. Our house has 130 years of history in its walls, and some pretty crappy design decisions were made along the way. We’re not worried. The house has really good bones, and it’ll be fabulous in no time.

Still, there is one room that grosses us out so badly that we seriously considering not sharing the before pictures. For the sake of keeping it real, though, we have to document the crustiest of the crusty.

Deep breath. Here we go:

This is the back door to our house, which is actually the door we use most often. It leads out to our back yard and garage, and leads in to the kitchen.

This room’s main purpose at the moment is for sunbathing:

That’s Jabba. She’s not much of a DIYer, but she’s a professional napper. While we’re upstairs demolishing rooms, she’s downstairs sunbathing and snoozing. Or interrupting to remind us it’s lunchtime:

She hangs out in the entryway a lot because it gets great sunlight through its super-ghetto windows:

Someone repaired that glass with clear packing tape. You can hardly see the crack, right? Right??

We’ve also been using this room as a place to store our recycling:

Our bike locks and helmets were thrown in here as well:

The windows overlook the ugly trellis that we’ll be ripping down:

And, in case you hadn’t noticed, there are no walls. Whoever renovated this room (and I’m using the word “renovated” very loosely), did a pretty terrible job of insulating. Everything is sort of crunched in and mushed down (total no-no), and they never got around to sheetrocking the walls. Or the ceiling:

One cool thing about this room is the exposed brick that’s been painted white:

Here it is on the other wall:

Oh, wait, I’m sorry. That’s not brick. Those are shingles. As in, the stuff that’s supposed to go on the outside of your house. The entire wall is covered with shingles that were painted white to “match” the brick:

All of those black spots you see on the shingles are places where we pulled out nails. The dorm fridge is what we lived out of before we got our shiny new fridge. Not gonna lie: that was a rough couple of weeks. You can also take a gander at our washer & dryer hookup.

We’ve been excited about having a laundry room pretty much since we started looking at houses to buy. We daydreamed about living the kind of life where we could wash our clothes while watching a movie. Throw our wash in the dryer without navigating through screaming kids running laps around the laundromat. Leave our laundry in the dryer overnight. And — oh, bliss — never ever again having to wear bathing suit bottoms as underwear because we’ve been too busy to drag our hampers across the street to the stupid, noisy laundromat.

Anyway, on the shingled wall, you can see a poorly sealed doorway (and even more nails):

Apparently this room was once connected to our half-bathroom, which was also recently “renovated.” It’s nowhere near as horrible as the laundry room, but it’s not pretty either. We’re guessing this space used to be an outdoor porch, and someone converted it into a half-bath and laundry room. And they did a pretty horrible job of it. To seal up the doorway, for instance, they just nailed a piece of plywood to the frame, painted it white, and called it a day.

There is one thing we plan on keeping from this room:

Bradley’s pretty indifferent about it, but I kind of love that faceplate. Can’t you see it painted bronze and looking really fabulous in another room? It’s one of those just-so-weird-it-might-work things that we’re going to try, and if it doesn’t work, then in the trash it goes.

We also found a thermometer in the room:

The Royal Order of Moose? Garbage.

Ugly light? Garbage.

Wait, no, we take that back. This might be salvageable. Capiz shell is all the rage right now, and with new fittings for the inside and a better way to hang it — a way that doesn’t include a cheap brass chain — we might make this work. Maybe. If we’re not totally smash-happy by the time we start renovating this room, in which case, it’ll probably die a horrible sledgehammer-related death.

We’re not really ready to renovate this room yet (we have a one-room-at-a-time policy), but we needed to get that stained carpet out. Luckily, this was a poorly done DIY job. It’s a theme in this room. So we didn’t have to rip up any carpet tacks or deal with any glue. Someone just used a stapler to staple the carpet to the wood. And we’re not sure they used a real staple gun. They looked like normal office staples. Moral of the story: people are weird.

The carpet came up easily, and underneath, we found a perfect preserved  Jackson Pollock painting!

Upon closer examination, though, we found that this was not a Pollock but a cheap knock-off by Scott:

Oh well. You can’t win ‘em all. Or, apparently, you can’t win at all with this room.

…just kidding! When it comes down to it, it’s still a laundry room. And a useable one now that we put a washer and dryer in it:

Whee! When I snapped that picture, those puppies were hooked up and doing one of the four loads of laundry we did that day. No bathing suit bottoms up in this hizzy!

We initially planned on buying new front loaders, but since we decided to splurge on kitchen appliances, we cut back on our laundry room budget. After reading a lot of reviews, we decided that maybe front loaders weren’t that great for us. I’m extremely allergic to mold. We’re sure other people are having great mold-free results with their front loaders, but we’re not going to risk it.

After looking at a lot of top loaders, we decided to buy a used set off of Craigslist.  So many people are getting rid of their 2 or 3-year-old top loaders in order to buy new front loaders. There are tons of deals to be had, plus buying used keeps perfectly-good machines out of landfills. By going to Craigslist, we were able to be both eco-conscious and budget-conscious.

How budget-conscious? Drumroll please! We got our machines for……$150 each! $300 for the set — and there’s nothing at all wrong with ‘em. We’d actually given ourselves a much-higher budget of $1200, so we technically saved ourselves $900.

As far as renovating this room goes, it’s pretty low on our list right now. But we’re already talking about doing a very light, airy look for both this room and the adjoining half-bathroom. Something modern but beachy. We’re taking our cues from the white brick wall and thinking white paneled walls and minimalist cabinetry. We’re also planning on keeping the floors light — either white or light grey — to contrast with the black floors throughout the house.

And, while we know there’s no room in our half-bath for a claw foot tub, we think this works beautifully:

Source

No rush. We’ll get to it when we get to it. For now, we’re sticking to the upstairs renovations. But we’re super excited that we can do our laundry while we’re working on the rest of the house. Or watching movies. Or going out for dinner. Or sleeping…

What we learned from this project:

• We don’t know who Scott is, but we want to have a long talk with him.
• Everyone’s jumping on the front loader bandwagon, which is great for the rest of us who don’t mind an energy efficient machine that’s a couple of years old. Check Craigslist!

We saved $1400 on kitchen appliances! Squee!

We went to IKEA to check out some shelves we’re thinking about getting. Instead of the stuff we walked in for, we ended up leaving with a pick-up-later receipt for a range and a fridge. Our biggest impulse buy EVER.

We owned a dishwasher already, which, surprisingly enough, we got from IKEA. We love it to pieces. We even named it. Sven. As in, “Lets sit on the couch and watch movies while Sven does the dishes.” Kind of a big deal when you’ve lived without a dishwasher for 7 years.

Source

We were a little worried that Sven would be chintzy or flimsy like so much of IKEA’s furniture, but it turns out IKEA doesn’t actually make the appliances. They just design appliances to look nice and get Whirlpool to make it for them. They’re not cheaply built. And they’re not exactly cheap in cost, either. Prices are pretty much exactly what we found at Lowe’s, Home Depot and Sears — but for stuff that’s way prettier.

And we needed pretty stuff for our kitchen. Since our house was a foreclosure, so it didn’t come with a fridge or dishwasher. It did come with a super old range. Pardon the yellow pictures. I didn’t take the time to white balance my crusty old point-and-shoot:

It was usable, but it was so old that it didn’t seem very efficient. And it was definitely not easy on the eyes.

We knew it wasn’t something we wanted to keep around forever, so we went ahead and hauled it out to the garage. We’ll eventually donate it or offer it for free on Craigslist. Or hope that it grows legs and walks out on its own so we never have to think about it again.

When we moved the oven, we discovered something lodged in the back.

It’s a brick-sized block of wood with what appears to be a bat carved into the front. And “December 25 1938″ carved into the back. From the look of it, the block might have been a handmade Christmas present that some kid made for his / her parents. An old-school DIYer? A kid after our own heart. We dusted off our 73-year-old find and set it on a bookshelf.

Before we closed on the house, we planned to set aside $1000 for both a range and a fridge. We wanted to score something great on mega-sale. Or just get something that would get us by for a few years, even if it wasn’t exactly what we wanted. Then we realized that it’s totally the wrong thing for us to pinch our pennies on. We love to cook, and we eat home-cooked meals 90% of the time. Since we’d be using our fridge and stove a lot, we figured we should get something we’re totally in love with regardless of cost, and budget tightly for other stuff we don’t use as often.

And then we met the Datid Pro D51:

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Datid is really wide and really industrial looking. Better yet, it FEELS really industrial. The matte black, the cast iron grates, the silver toggles on the knobs. And there’s a wok burner in the center. A wok burner! We swooned! We also loved how it doesn’t have a back panel to it, so we can set this in to our custom-made island and have it be flush with the rest of the surface. But that’s not the best part.

Original price: $1,749.00
What we paid: $799
Saved: $950. That’s 54% off. (That’s the best part!)

We got the range at a super deep discount because IKEA is discontinuing this sucker. Apparently nobody really buys black appliances anymore. We, on the other hand, embraced its hue. We think we can make it work in our kitchen, because we’re not going matchy-matchy with our appliances. It doesn’t really bug us that the dishwasher is white but the stove is black. The stove will be set into some stark white cabinets. We might even do white concrete countertops for added contrast. Why hide the stove? Why not make it stand out?

Besides, the original cabinets in the kitchen — the super old ones from the 1880s — will be stained dark as well, so it’ll fit right in. And our backsplash might be a black, grey & white tile number we rip off off Dexter Morgan’s condo kitchen.

Long story short, we can make this work.

After spending $799 on that stove, we were thinking about cheaping out on the fridge. And then we walked right into Nutid:

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Having lived with craptastic apartment fridges for years, we might have shed a tear or two as we stood there in awe of this boxy beauty. Look at how squared off that baby is. All of the other fridges we saw have curved fronts or curved handles. This one doesn’t have a curve on her. We loved it! Plus she has a digital display, an ice maker, tons of pull-out drawers in the fridge & a side freezer. “A freezer like that,” Bradley said, “was made for Costco shoppers.” And then we reached for our wallets.

Fridges similar to Nutid were in the $2000ish price range when we looked online. Fridges not quite as squared off were cheaper, but still hovering around $1500.

Original price: $1,349.00
What we paid: $899
Saved: $450. That’s 33% off!

We think we walked away with a great deal.

Our pretax total for the fridge and stove came out to $1698. We cut our costs further by picking up the appliances ourselves from the New Jersey warehouse instead of having them delivered to the house for a bajillion dollars. (We’re not sure what IKEA’s delivery charges are, but we’re pretty sure it would be between a jillion and a bajillion to deliver to Pennsylvania.) In the end, we came in $648 above our budget for kitchen appliances, but we think it’s worth it because we smile every time we open the fridge or walk by the stove.

Moving our new appliances into the house wasn’t easy. We rented a hand truck from Home Depot and loaded up the fridge first:

The thing weighs, like, 500 pounds. Luckily for Bradley, I go to the gym and lift heavy weights. And I gave up on the idea of manicures right around the time we started crushing walls and hauling lumber. No prissiness up in our hizzy. So we rolled up our sleeves and somehow got the fridge out of the van (which has no ramp), onto the handtruck, and safely onto our patio (which also has no ramp).

Getting it inside was an even bigger ordeal.

Big ol’ fridge. Teeny tiny door. We removed all the styrofoam and cardboard packaging around the fridge and squeezed it through (barely). And then we had to get it through the living room and into the kitchen, which — surprise! — was an even bigger pain in the butt.

The fridge came with a little plastic protector base that was about 1/2 inch too wide for our door frame. We didn’t have the right socket set to remove it. After a few choice profanities, we ended up laying the fridge on its side and then hacking off the plastic feet with a handsaw.

It finally slid through the door frame and over to its current resting place (not its permanent home). We took a minute to bask in its glow:

It wasn’t easy, what with the hideous linoleum tile and the fruit-themed wall border. But we basked as best we could.

The stove came in with such little drama that I completely forgot to take a picture of it. We haven’t fully assembled it since our gas isn’t turned on yet, but rest assured that it looks fab-u-lous in its new (temporary) home. Especially when compared to what used to reside in its place:

See that thing big silver thing hanging out of the wall? Doesn’t it look like a cartoon robot arm?

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That’s the old venting system for this stove. It’s plugged into the back of the oven and into the chimney. We’re not sure it actually did anything. All we know is that we giggled maniacally when we ripped it out of the wall. And we giggled even harder when we tossed the old Dumpy McGoo stove in our garage and pushed our sleek new Datid in its place.

What we learned:

• Nobody has cleaned behind that stove since at least 1938. Gross.
• Someone lost a dry chunk of Ramen down the burner.
• It’s OK to take the cheap route, but some things are totally worth splurging on.