Well I guess I forgot a mini-crisis: the oven caught on fire and I couldn't put it out.
Here is the story:
So I come home from work and decide to make fish dinner. I bought everything the day before so I just had to cook. I used the oven to bake some tilapia for about half an hour while I made rice and salad.
After half an hour, I checked on the fish and decided to put it back in to cook for another five minutes. Well that is when I notice a bright light coming from the oven. It was much brighter than the oven light. It turns out that the heating element caught on fire and was slowly burning in the oven. The heating element was slowly burning like a fuse to dynamite in a cartoon and was burning bright white.
I took the fish out of the oven and used the fire extinguisher. It was the chemical powder extinguisher that will put out wood/paper, gasoline, and electrical fires. The extinguisher didn't work. Since the extinguisher didn't work and the fire was bright white, this was clearly a metal fire which can't be put out without special equipment. If this was the Navy, we would throw whatever it was overboard and let it burn in the ocean but I didn't have that choice here.
The fire department was called but I was able to shut off the circuit breaker and cut the electricity while on the phone with the fire department. That stopped the fire. The fire department came anyway within five minutes to make sure it was out. They advised unplugging it and not using the oven or stove at all. I agreed.
We ended up finding a stove for $1400 at Brandsmart which was a little better than the ones at Lowes and Home Depot. It is on the high end but it is hard to find a slide in stove. Also, the old stove was probably 20 years old. The standard dimensions have changed since then (29 inches wide) and I had to cut the countertop, cabinetry, and moulding to open the space up another inch to meet the new dimensions of standard slide in stoves (30 inches wide). Between the fire extinguisher and me cutting the countertop, there was dust all over the kitchen for days.
Now without being able to cook, all we could use was the microwave and eat out more often. It was getting aggravating so I went to Brandsmart to pick up the stove and not wait another three days for delivery. Well it wasn't in stock like they had told me. Now I had to wait several more days to eat real food.
The oven finally came in and fit close but not perfectly. It is a little tall for the counter but hard to tell. We plan on getting new cabinets anyway so we can live with it for now. Also it is stainless steel so it matches the microwave. I ended up taking the old oven to the scrap yard because it was a fire hazard.
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| Removal of old stove |
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| New Oven |
