New Stove & Kitchen Preparation

It all started with trying to clean the stove.

I should tell you that living in an old farm house can be adventurous. Upon our arrival, I discovered our stove was a cooktop, but the controls for it were on the vent hood and that they were push buttons. More than once I thought I had turned things off only to discover that I had instead turned them onto high (DUH!).

Anyway, I was lifting up my favorite big burner to clean underneath it when I discovered the insulation surrounding the wire from the control to the actual burner had some breaks in it and I was worrried that a breakage in the wire might be next.

We had a housing inspector come out and inspect all the farm houses and the stove got a grade of a "D". When we took the cooktop out of the wall we discovered that the wood around the two big burners had already started to burn under the tile countertop. SO glad we decided to replace the cooktop, eh?

In the meantime, new cooktops are pretty pricey, so we tried a different approach. Since I already HATED the wall oven that I had (it was too small, too high for short little me, and I had burned me several times using it already), how about a getting a regular range and putting my pots and pan cupboard where the old oven slot was. It might be a little more carpenter work, but everything would be updated and be more to my liking.

Well, it almost worked like a charm. As the general contractor said, "This is way remodels always go." I'll show what I mean in the pictures that follow.

This is with everything out.

The large circle is where it vents to the outside from the vent hood. The little circle is where it went through the cabinet to connect to the power source to make the vent hood/cooktop controls work.

The little circles at the bottom are the copper lines that were cut through when the cabinet was cut out. The line was the water line to the ice maker/cold water dispenser for the refrigerator. We miss it already. Hopefully it can get fixed soon.

The big circles at the top are where the burners had started burning through the wood under the tile.

This is the hole where the wall oven was. The contractor was too quick for me and got the cross piece (circled area) in before I was able to take a picture of just the hole.

The entire work area.

This is Eric Storm, the general contrator who did such a great job for us. One of the funny things about these shots is the color of his hair. From cutting the tile, the dust got in his hair and it makes him look like it's almost gray. He's really just a young whipper-snapper though. Even with the dust in his hair, he just kept right on working. Good Man!

And, finally, the pile of stuff that is to be hauled away.

So the next post will be the construction, its accompanying problems and the putting of everything back together. Should be much more exciting, I think.