OSK... careful on what you reccommend around here. A 20 year old Poggenpohl kitchen is likely to not have doors and drawer fronts available nor appliance panels availabel today that match. That means OP needs to reuse the DW front. Are you certain the current modle Bosch DW's will take the same size as a 20 year old Miele???? Likewise panels for the freedom fridges won't be available. However the 48" SZ panels are still the same. Also - careful on touting what's the worst. SubZeros may have some repair needs, but Viking's fridges are worse and have design flaws that are widely known - in the industry- as you say. Do not take Consumer Report's surveys as gospel and be sure to cite your facts (if you have them) when you make a bold statement such as "Sub Zero's have the worst repair rate in the industry". Heck, even some of the first Freedom owners here had/have problem in addition to a year delay in recieving the units. If you merely took the % of people with them here and the probs., they'd have a bad record too. Hardly a good bellweather for the product on the whole.

I think I want a stainless Miele dishwasher with hidden controls, but I don't like any of their handle options. In my quest to decide on visible vs. hidden control dishwasher (see my earlier post), I discovered the option mentioned in this post: Order a Miele fully-integrated unfinished dishwasher along with the optional "blank" (no holes, no handle) stainless front panel, no-holes (Miele part number 21995337D). However, I've looked at the cartoon installation instructions referred to above, and I can't quite figure out how this works with a stainless panel. The instructions seem to show how it works with a wood panel, but I'm unclear on how my own handle would attach to a stainless panel. I realize you can drill through the stainless (well, I can't, but my installer can), but I'm not sure what a handle would "grab onto" in a stainless panel, because I'm not sure what the stainless panel looks like out of the box. If you order part number 21995337D, do you get 3/4-inch thick stainless steel? The install instructions say the panel has to be 3/4 inches thick, but if it were pure metal that would weigh 100 pounds! Or is it a thin sheet of stainless over some type of wood? My problem is that I can't figure out if I need some special type of handle with special dimensions, or if this stainless, no-holes, no-handle panel from Miele is engineered in some way to grab onto any handle that can be screwed in from behind. Has anyone ever seen this panel, and can you explain how it works to install a custom handle onto it?

It may depend on what kind of drying cycle your dishwasher has. If it has a heated cycle (with the heating element in the bottom of the washer) , it does cause steam and might be a problem. But a dishwasher with an air-circulating drying cycle should be okay. I would talk to an appliance store about this. I've had fully integrated dishwashers in my last kitchen and in this one. Both were Askos, with the air-circulating drying. I've had no problem with warping.

I am impressed by how clean my SS Miele looks. I didn't clean it for many months after install. Then I was leaning down one day to pick up some thing from the floor and saw a water drip line. When I bent in front of the DW to wipe that drip with a wet microfiber on a sunny day, I was shocked to see more streaks and some gunky places. These could not be seen at standing height or sitting-at-barstool-height in regular light. The DW always looked clean. And, the spots were easy to wipe clean. My KA fridge is a whole different story. Ugh. I wish it were made with Miele's SS.