Anyone ripped out an integrated washer and replaced it with a freestanding one?

[PickAChew]

Washer in new house is too low capacity, has a rubbish spin speed and quite frankly bogging beyond was a service wash can fix.

With 2 kids with SN, we need a bigger drum and something which doesn't leave everything feeling sopping.

Integrated options are expensive and the only one that is doing it for me is an £800 Bosch.

Alternatively, I can buy a Bosch or Siemens (identical machines) with the same features for £500. To me, it's a no brainer. It should fit t space and looks like the only major issue is the need to hard wire it in.

Yep - very straightforward although we did need cut the plinth and remove some casing. Most of the 'damage' was hidden by the new machine although we did touch up a small piece of the housing with paint to match. Never buying integrated again - as you say reduced choice and more expensive and the look of the machine itself does not bother me in the kitchen.

The plinths are all falling off, anyhow. Already had to move it to clean assorted crap out of the filter to get this washer working at all.

We have a free standing washer and dryer as we moved house and it seemed ridiculous to pay a large amount of money for integrated but inferior machines. It was much cheaper just to buy a wider worktop to fit them under

We did not need to alter the worktop but do not rely on me - double check your dimensions first just incase!

We put our existing dishwasher into a new kitchen and the company left us all the bits to install an integrated one. Nine years on and it's still going strong. Grr!

Anyway, to get it to fit under the work surface they had to remove the top lid, exposing the insulating felt and some wires. That would probably invalidate the guarantee in the case of a brand new machine. In ours it had already expired.

The worktop is full height and the worktops 63cm deep, so onto a winner there. The washer dryer I left behind was massive and wouldn't have fitted, but a freestanding washer seems fine.

It's replacing the half knackered range cooker that will require some worktop engineering, as it's only 89cm wide and a snug fit. At least DH has fixed the bent hinge so the oven door shuts, so hopefully we'll get through Christmas without having to give that anymore headspace. There's a corresponding hole in the floor tiles that looks like the hinge broke by something heavy landing on the oven door and toppling it.

The dishwasher is actually just tickety boo now that I have removed all trace of stray earrings and what looked like the seedy debris from a dishwashered fatball.

I'd find the manual and check the measurements very carefully, we bought freestanding recently and found that a lot of the measurements were bollocks. Once we had pipes behind then the front to back depth was about 70cm in total.

yes, was pretty easy.
you might need to adjust the plinth. and you might need to remove screws that screw the washer to the floor or workbench.
and do measure the space under the bench! most washers are more or less the same size, but some aren't.