Yes, I said Fire! That is exactly what I yelled to my hubby Wednesday night while he was engrossed in fixing the ice maker. When he had gotten home from work, he pulled the ice maker out of the freezer so he could install the new parts. Once he had hooked up the water line, the ice maker was actually making ice just fine, but it would only dispense crushed ice because the solenoid had seized up preventing the dispenser from switching over to cubes even though the display said “Cubed”. Since we have a dispenser in the door, we’d like to be able to use it for cubed ice without pulling out the ice tray every time we need a few cubes.
So he was putting the parts in the ice maker while I finished cleaning up the paint chips from all of my kitchen cabinet paint scraping endeavors. He had put some french fries in the oven (since we were having one of our healthy meals, ha ha), and they were almost done. Our plan was that he would finish the ice maker, I’d start some broccoli on the stove-top and he would then grill the hot dogs. I figured the broccoli would add some healthy benefit to our disgusting meal plan for the night since we had decided on hot dogs as a quick meal option. Perfect plan since we were short on time….or so we thought!
As I put up the shop vac after sucking up all the paint chips off the counter, the floor and every surface on me, I turned on the stove top and put a tablespoon of butter in the pan. Since this is an electric stove, I had to wait on the stove top and the pan to heat up. Of course if I had my new gas stove installed, I could have just started the broccoli almost immediately. Oh yea, I haven’t even mentioned the new gas stove.
I love gas stoves because that is what I originally learned to cook on. When I was a little girl, my grandma taught me how to cook some basic foods on a gas stove. I had always struggled with cooking on top of an electric stove so when we first moved to Raleigh six years ago, and the house had a gas stove, I was super excited. I thoroughly enjoyed it to the point that the ability to install a gas stove was a very important feature in a house for me. This house has an electric stove, but lo and behold, behind the stove is a gas line hook-up, and since we have gas heat, we figured it would work, too.
So when we first got in the house and discovered what bad shape the electric stove was in, we decided to get a gas stove earlier than we had planned, and what luck we had finding one. We actually found a floor display model that had been marked down tremendously because they couldn’t sell it. It had been returned to the store because all of the knobs were a little bit off the marks, but we figured we could try to fix it or live with it since the stove was such a great deal. We had it delivered the next week, and that weekend, my hubby set about hooking up the gas stove, turning the gas on at the pipe behind the stove and realizing that there was no gas coming through the gas line because the stove top would not light at all. Great! Plan B.
We put the electric back into commission while my hubby decided he would research how to get the gas stove hooked up. We weren’t sure if there was something wrong with the gas line or the stove, but with so many other pressing projects and an operable stove, he decided to put the stove research on the back burner. So as I was saying, Wednesday night I turned on the burner, put the butter in pan and walked into the living room where all of my utensils are sitting in a bowl on my kitchen table (since that’s the only place in this house for the table), and I started smelling something burning. As I walked back into the kitchen I muttered under my breath, “Oh crap, I think the butter’s burning. That’s strange since I just turned it on.” Immediately I noticed something was amiss. I saw smoke rolling out of the vent of the stove and thought, “Why on earth is there smoke coming from the oven?” I went over and opened the oven door only to find, much to my surprise, that there was no fire in there. Further investigation led me to the back of the stove only to notice a fire down in the area where the electrical wires are located behind the cover plate. I screamed, “There’s a fire in here!”
Chaos ensued, I turned off the stove top, my hubby turned off the breaker switch, my son started yelling something to his daddy who walked past the stove and into the hallway to argue with my son as I was freaking out because there was a fire in the back of the stove while my hubby acted all nonchalant about it. I was about to look for the fire extinguisher when I thought, “Maybe my hubby knows an easier and less messy way to put out this fire.” Then my son said, “We need a fire extinguisher,” with my hubby replying, “Then we’ll have an even bigger mess on our hands,” while I was thinking, “But at least our house won’t be burned down.”
My hubby came back over to the stove, which I had quickly pulled away from the wall during all the chaos, and he stood there watching the flames inside the cover on the back of the stove as they died down. About that time, my daughter walks out of the bathroom in a towel. Yes, I had forgotten that she was taking a shower so I began thanking God that our house had not caught on fire! Once my hubby had waited until the cover plate cooled a little, he removed it and discovered that he was going to have to make a trip to Lowes Home Improvement to get the parts he would need to fix it. Meanwhile, I was thinking, “Great! Now I have two stoves and can’t use either one!” Of course, my hubby lightened the moment by saying that maybe we could replace the melted terminal block with a hot dog and just paint it. I had to laugh because I think every surface in this house has been painted, and the paint jobs are not very high quality!
What a day we had! So my hubby was up a little later than he had planned to be fixing the stove. We decided we would keep the breaker turned off unless we actually need to cook something with plans to stay close-by if we do have to use the stove. I think this little fiasco caused my hubby to think a little harder about getting the gas stove installed a little sooner because he came home armed with information, researched the gas stove installation a little more thoroughly, and I am happy to say that we are in business. I can now cook on my beautiful, sparkly, new gas stove – except it is almost too pretty to use. Ah, who cares! I think I need to plan a nice home-cooked meal for my family tonight. I think they will appreciate.
Until then, I have some cabinets to scrape.
Happy Home Improvement!
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