Never as easy as you think.

One of the things we need to replace in our "new to us" home is a stove. I have been pricing ranges and looking at various circulars for the best deal since last June. The oven is original to the house, which was built in the early 1970's. At least I am assuming it is original to the house, it might have been replaced in the 80s, not sure. Either way, it is high time for a new oven.

Luckily my mother in law made that possible this week. She came to stay with us for a few days and was very kindly making us dinner one night. She told me she needed a cooking sheet, and since she had recently emptied my dishwasher for me (yes, she is a great help) I figured she knew where it was. I walked out of the kitchen while she grabbed the cookie sheet.

The fire alarm kept going off while dinner was cooking. This is normal, the fire alarm goes off pretty regularly when we use the oven. I think we have a very sensitive fire alarm and a really old oven. Lilly also kept calling from her room "what smells so bad?" I told her to be quiet because Nanna was cooking.

At the end of the 40 minutes we opened up the oven to remove dinner only to find that my mother in law had used my silver plastic cutting board instead of a cookie sheet. There was melted plastic covering the entire oven floor, the racks, the heating elements, and of course dinner. Jim tried to scrape the plastic off and out of the house because of all the fumes. But it was no use. That plastic was molded onto the heating elements for good.

My mother in law felt terrible about it, but I was actually excited. It was a reason to force us into buying a new oven...AND there happened to be the best deal online that I had seen since June. Worked out great.

I ordered the oven and it was scheduled for free delivery and free haul away of the old oven the very next day. Wow, how easy.

Of course nothing is ever easy in this house. The old oven was hard wired into the floor and my sister in law ended up having to take apart the old oven to un-wire it so the delivery guys would take it away. Because of liability reasons they are not aloud to unwire and or rewire ovens directly to the floor.

Seriously, only in Pennsylvania are ovens hard wired into the floor and not simply plugged into an outlet. Nothing is ever easy in this house.

So now sits our brand new oven in the middle of the kitchen with crazy wires sticking up out of the flooring.

Jim is working on it and promises to have all order restored tonight.