passatdoc
Well-known member
I don't know if earlier models could accept custom panels, but our KDS-14 c. 1962 had them. Must have been pretty innovative for the time. The control panel was the same as shown in the ad, beige and brown colored. Would have looked odd paired with say a light birch or white panel, but back then most cabinets were medium to dark toned wood. Our cabinets were maple-stained, a bit lighter than the cabinets in the ad, but looked good with the control panel.
The machine had only one mishap, my sister once put Joy dishwashing liquid in the soap dispenser instead of Cascade. For some reason, my mother never bought JetDry or whatever rinse agents were available at the time, and the DW definitely had a rinse agent dispenser. Consequently, now and then the glasses would be spotted at the end of cycle. Mom had never read the manual, with two consequences:
1. Jet Dry was never used, hence we sometimes had spotted glasses. However, we had a whole-house water softener which to some degree mitigated this issue.
2. We NEVER used the Utility/Pots cycle because Mom didn't know what would happen if that button were pressed. Instead, we used only Normal Cycle or Rinse and Hold. Probably some pots and baked on dishes and casseroles were washed by hand with the KDS-14 might have been able to handle it if given a chance with Utility cycle. Because we used only Normal cycle, we did a fair amount of scraping and rinsing. And it was this machine that put me in the mindset that you have to rinse dishes before loading them. It took my present Bosch DW, now ten years old, to break me of that habit!!
The machine had only one mishap, my sister once put Joy dishwashing liquid in the soap dispenser instead of Cascade. For some reason, my mother never bought JetDry or whatever rinse agents were available at the time, and the DW definitely had a rinse agent dispenser. Consequently, now and then the glasses would be spotted at the end of cycle. Mom had never read the manual, with two consequences:
1. Jet Dry was never used, hence we sometimes had spotted glasses. However, we had a whole-house water softener which to some degree mitigated this issue.
2. We NEVER used the Utility/Pots cycle because Mom didn't know what would happen if that button were pressed. Instead, we used only Normal Cycle or Rinse and Hold. Probably some pots and baked on dishes and casseroles were washed by hand with the KDS-14 might have been able to handle it if given a chance with Utility cycle. Because we used only Normal cycle, we did a fair amount of scraping and rinsing. And it was this machine that put me in the mindset that you have to rinse dishes before loading them. It took my present Bosch DW, now ten years old, to break me of that habit!!
