A 5mm mistake meant 5 years of broken dishes. If only there’d been more attention to detail this could have been avoided.
A lot of people believe that Miele appliances are top of the range. You certainly pay enough for them. So when poor installation means you can’t fully open your new Miele dishwasher it’s enough to make you spit chips.
Jackie had her kitchen completely renovated about five years ago. Part of the renovations included the installation of a new Miele dishwasher with an integrated front - that’s where there’s a veneer panel attached to the front so that it looks just like the surrounding cupboards. Miele, like most appliances that allow integrated fronts, has a detailed set of specifications that kitchen manufacturers should follow. The spec details lots of things including the required heights and dimensions for integrated panels.
After the kitchen and the appliances had been installed Jackie found that she couldn’t open the dishwasher door to its full 90 degrees; she could only open it part of the way. Jackie could see immediately that there was a problem. She called the kitchen installer back but he said there was something wrong with the dishwasher. She called in the Miele guy who shook his head and said: “This often happens. These installation guys just don’t take the time to read our specs. The problem is that the installer has made the front panel too long so it’s hitting the body of the dishwasher concealed by the kickboard.
This only becomes apparent when you open the door.
Jackie tried to get the kitchen installer to fix it. No wonder he wasn’t very enthused. (And of course, she’d already paid his company by this point. )
To fix it properly would have meant removing all the other fronts and doors because if he’d just shortened the one in front of the dishwasher it wouldn’t have been level with all the others - which would have looked very noticeable. Another option would have been to shorten the panel on the front of the dishwasher, and put it on sliding grooves so that it could shift when opened.
Sound complicated? It is. And if the kitchen manufacturer had been paying enough attention to detail, Jackie wouldn’t even be needing to explore it.
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