The new range was delivered today. Still needs to be hooked up, so it’s hanging out in the dining room for the moment.
New range
I’m not going to post a picture of what it looked like underneath the old range. All I can say is “Ew!”
Completely unrelated, I had been looking for fixtures for the downstairs bath. I kept looking at dual-flush toilets, trying to be environmentally responsible and all that. Then I discovered the Niagra Stealth toilet.
Elongated bowl? Check.
Comfort height? Check. I swear that a previous owner found toilets that are shorter than normal.
Watersense certification? Check. Seriously – 0.8 gpf. Tied the best dual flush, except this uses 0.8 gallons for a full flush!
Comes complete with seat and wax gasket? Check.
Looks OK. Check.
And, they were very reasonably priced. I decided that not only was I going to install one downstairs, I was going to replace the two upstairs as well. For all the reasons stated above – comfort height, elongated bowl, and water conservation.
They arrived on Monday. They only came with curbside delivery. I slipped the delivery guy a $20, and he brought all three into the garage for me. Which is great, because with my back I can barely walk, let alone lug 100+ lb boxes. What was I thinking ordering these now?
So last Saturday the oven had a fire. By the time I hobbled upstairs, the lower heating element was glowing bright orange and sparking. Rather than looking for a fire extinguisher, I went to the breaker box and cut the power to the electric range. Immediate crisis resolved.
This is where the heating element shorted
Repair is not an attractive option. One burner has never worked. It’s 20+ years old. Even if parts can be located, it’s just not worth it.
Old stove
OK, so start looking at new ranges. Focus was on GE. Why? Because, trying to avoid stainless steel, I bought a GE Slate dishwasher. Looks nice. The problem is, the only thing that matches are other GE Slate appliances. If they are not next to each other, you might get away with black stainless (it’s something different for each manufacturer).
Second consideration: I want to open up (remove) the upper part. of the wall between the kitchen and the dining room. That means I need a “slide in” range. Fancy way of saying that the controls have been moved from the back to the front. and therefore the price has doubled. Below are a “freestanding” range (left) ans a slide in range (right).
Freestanding
Slide in
GE makes four freestanding ranges, with prices between $700 and $900. They make exactly one slide-in range, price $1,800. Best Buy briefly had the slide-in listed for $1,349, but that price had disappeared by the time I went to buy. Grrrrr! These prices do not consider any of the double oven variants. That’s another $1,000 for a really cool feature that I’m going to use at most twice per year.
There is yet another consideration. The 20 year old dishwasher was replaced. The 20 year old range is being replaced. What about the 20 year old refrigerator?
That opened up an entirely new can of worms. The kitchen is pretty poorly laid out. The location for the fridge limits choices. A side-by-side will work. A traditional top freezer will work. Nothing with a drawer will work, because there is nowhere to stand while opening the drawer.
And did I mention that there is only 28″ from the wall to the doorway? A fridge that is 32″ deep, like the current fridge, sticks out beyond the doorway. GE does make a refrigerator that meets these criteria. A 21.9 CF refrigerator for only $2,100!
Remember, the house was purchased in July. It’s now May. In 9 months I have had to replace the roof, have drain tiles installed, and have had to gut the basement, and am planning to redo. There’s nothing in the budget for a kitchen redo!
I finally came to the realization that if I switched to stainless, I could buy a range ($1,100), refrigerator ($1,400) and replace the dishwasher ($400) for less than a matching oven ($1,800) and refrigerator ($2,100) in slate. That’s a $1,000 savings, plus whatever I get from selling a 9 month old dishwasher. For me, it’s just not worth it today.
Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars on Home Depot.com and Lowes.com. It has everything I wanted, including a fifth burner and convection. Was going to order from Best Buy, but suddenly this model was no longer available for delivery. So I ordered from Lowes. It arrives on Tuesday.
The rest is waiting to see what memorial day sales bring for reduced pricing.
While I took time off to contemplate the ceiling, work has been ongoing. A contractor came in, looked at the inside walls, and opined that there was water coming in over the sill plate. His solution – french drains, sealing the walls, and dropping the ground level below the level of the sill plate.
This was done around the northeast corner of the house, which is where the foundation is about 3 feet tall, with the sill plate being (previously) below ground level.
Here’s some pictures of the work:
Notice that there are now matching lights on the front of the house. Came out one morning to find that one of the lights next to the front door was broken, hanging by the wiring.
At Least the Roof Leaks 