This is the year of our appliances breaking. Our bar fridge broke back in late winter. It would be too expensive to fix, so we converted it to a bar pantry. In the springtime, our dishwasher hose was eaten by a mouse, and it took over a month to have the hose replaced. Yesterday, while I was making cauliflower pizza for lunch, the hinge on my oven door snapped.
The bar fridge I didn’t care about breaking. The dishwasher was a royal pain in the ass, but I could still do dishes by hand. But the oven…dammit! The week before Thanksgiving too! š
When it happened, I started to cry. I thought about how much I love and use my stove and oven. How many thousands of meals have I made using it for the last 17 years. When we bought our home, we had to purchase a new stove; the old one was too unsafe to use; the propane company wouldn’t even consider hooking it up.
The stove is 36-inches, not your standard size. That’s what size was in the kitchen in which the cabinetry was built around. We picked a beautiful stove, a Thermador. We got it for a discount since it had a scratch in the stainless steel on the side. Marty is a master wheeler-dealer and got a good deal. The stove was still expensive but worth it since I use the stove and oven at least 300 days a year. That’s a lot of use in 17-years.
Marty tried to find replacement hinges and found that parts are hard to find since the stove and parts are discontinued. Through my tears, I started looking at 36-inch stoves online, and I saw gorgeous ones! I picked out about four of them…I was in love.
In the meantime, Marty found the hinges from a third-party seller on Amazon. This, of course, was good news and was only going to cost about $160; if the hinges will work, that is. A part of me was relieved that he found them and would hopefully arrive before Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving is one of the granddaddies of all the holidays from a cook’s standpoint. After crying about what I was going to do to bake my turkey and pies, I realized I could use the grill for baking the turkey and making my pies in the toaster/convection oven. Problem solved.
Here’s the thing…a part of me doesn’t want the hinges to work now that I saw those spiffy new stoves. I already redesigned that section of the kitchen, including getting rid of the upper cabinets for a new exhaust hood and open shelving. I also know exactly what kind of tiles I would use as a new backsplash, those gorgeous European tiles in black, white, and charcoal gray. They fit together to form a pattern.
I fessed up to Marty about wanting a new stove, and this is what he said. “Even if the hinges work, it will buy us time to pick out and find a new stove in the near future.” The stove is on its last legs, but we could take our time redesigning and remodeling without picking out something in haste. Ha, so he was on board!
With the uncertainty of the hinges working, I am sure he is already looking for deals on floor models somewhere since ordering anything right now, the way our world is is out of the question.
So, I am not sure what will happen, but in any case, I will still pull off Thanksgiving dinner without a problem.