The New Apartment: Things Bought My hope to one day assist someone doing research on appliances and things with an actual review and photos. Basically, this is what I was looking for when shopping.
The Thing: Dishwasher Bosch SPE5ES55UC 18" Built-In Dishwasher with Recessed Handle Water 500 Series 46-Decibel Built-in Dishwasher with Stainless Steel Tub Model #: SPE5ES55UC
Let's Wash Dishes So, as my regular reader knows, we bought an apartment which was a major undertaking for us as we have never bought anything. Cars. Homes. Vacation Homes. Solid Gold Rocket Cars. None of that.
Amateur. I'm sure when the bank ran our credit report it came back, "who?"
We needed to buy a dishwasher which was super exciting after being dishwasher-less after 16 years of rent-stabilized crazy apartment living. We had drawn up the kitchen plans via the Ikea kitchen planning tool and our contractor defaulted the dishwasher to the standard 24-inch model.
After a ton of research, I proposed the idea of doing an 18-inch model using the logic that we are only two people and we don't really need a full-size dishwasher to wash our daily two plates, two bowls, and two coffee mugs. We'd be 'saving up' dishes for weeks in order to justify running a larger model. Also, the 18-inch one is kind of cool looking. Additionally, we'd gain 6 inches that we could use elsewhere in the kitchen (which we did and it's great and we put it to good use).
Bosch got lots of good reviews on the ol' Consumer Reports and, let's be honest, they look cool. As much as I like the fancy Bosch units with all the hidden controls, there were two things that drove me to get the unit we got with controls on the front:
(1) Controls on the front = huge discount (2) For the models with the hidden controls, there were reports of the buttons getting wonky because of the moisture coming out the top when you open it or some sort of jibber-jabber along those lines.
We bought this one. Our first dishwasher.
Yay or Nay? Yay. It's been a solid little dishwasher. It runs quiet. It cleans the dishes really well. It's handsome and quiet. The only issues we've ever had were our fault - we'd load it wonky and the soap dispense would get blocked. We figured that out pretty quickly and it doesn't happen anymore.
We bought it at Lowes for $800. Their delivery service was great. Friendly and careful with everything.
