Sounds like a good solution, and nice re-use of an appliance headed for the curb.
We have a "dish drawer" I think it's called. F& P makes a split dishwasher that has a separate upper and lower drawer, with the idea being that you run just the upper section for the normal, light duty, day to day, and the lower section for pots and pans. We have just the upper section and just try to be more creative about loading it. Similarly, I try to run the hot water tap for a couple minutes to get the water from our on-demand (LPG) water heater to the kitchen before kicking it off.
Most days, particularly in the summer we use the built in timer - many newer models you can press to turn on, or press and hold to scroll to a 1, 2, 3 ,4-hr delay - to set it to begin mid-afternoon so it coincides with our solar production for the day.