Oak has always dreamed of being able to have two ovens – very handy for entertaining, baked goods, stock-making, and so on. We always had a struggle with what temperature to use when cooking two things at the same time.

Well, our house had a microwave-oven combo. As you can see, it was a lovely unit:

Also, check out that HAWT brass squashed light fixture.  When we moved in it had like a 1/4″ of dust on it.  We have it as a souvenir out in the garage.  There’s a simple flushmount fixture there now but I really want to put in an L-shaped track light when we redo the kitchen.

Anyway, the microwave didn’t open.  It was missing a crucial piece:  the handle. (WTF?) Initially we thought, oh, we can just use the oven for awhile because we already had a microwave… but an hour of trying to chisel off the black gunk on the inside caused us to throw in the towel.  Even my mom, the queen of rescuing grungy appliances, said it had to go.  Um, GROSS! Unfortunately I never got a picture of the inside of the oven. Consider yourself lucky!

We went on a hunt on our new favorite site, craigslist. Double ovens are tricky because they need to fit the width and depth of your cabinet. We finally found one! Best part was that we ended up getting it for something like $175 (you might note that a new double oven is at least $2000). Ding a ling.

First, the old oven had to come out.  Note the awesome hair on Oak caused by several days of hardcore housework.  I think they took out the electrical panel on the top of the unit for fun! haha.

Our new oven would fit the cabinet, but the pesky electrical box stuck out and would cause the oven to stick out a few inches too far.  Dave had the great idea of recessing the electrical box back into the wall behind so the oven would fit.  Sweet!  Here he is removing the box to cut the new recess:

Yeah.. OK, he actually DID turn off the electricity this time and he was not actually being shocked.  Had you fooled there for a minute didn’t I?

Oak decided to give our new unit a hug after we plugged it in and did discover it was functional (always a question with a craigslist find)!!! Woohoo!!

A little more work by the boys and our new double oven was in place.  It’s already made several delicious meals and batches of stock!! It even has convection… aren’t we fancy?

Side story: As you recall, the microwave in our old unit was lacking a handle.  However, when you looked in the door, you could see that there was something inside the microwave – like balls of plastic bags or something.  Oak and I liked to joke that there was a raccoon living inside of the microwave.  Being the curious cats that we are, we had to bust that puppy open.  Dave thought there might be some money hidden in there (ie. our key to fame and fortune).  However, the result was several bags of cereal and some leftover Halloween candy.  Um,  yes that is what I store in my microwave!!  Whatevs! Stay tuned for some more interesting items found in around the house..

Posted by Carrie on Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Categories: blog, home improvement · 5 Comments »