it can’t just be easy can it?
Posted in gotta have a plan, family life on Mar 23rd, 2008
For St Patrick’s Day I made Irish Stew and GFCF Soda Bread. It was yummy and I got to thinking about how I needed to start baking more, GFCF baked goods are quite pricey and not always tasty. A quick shopping trip at Amazon and a GF baking book was winging it’s way to our home. The next night the oven died in a arc of electric badness. Oven . . . dead . . . shit!
A few of months ago, when we were replacing the dishwasher, we gave the replacement of the drop-in range a bit of thought and the plan, at that time, was to pull out the oven, trim the counter, cut out the filler piece under the front of the oven and slide in a freestanding range. This morning we pulled out the drop-in and ran into a couple of problems.
(range pulled out and in the middle
of the kitchen, back taken off)
(Oh, look at the burned insulation!)
1) The drop in is hard-wired, a freestanding range needs an outlet.
2) The cabinets were custom built and the bottom (shelf) of the cabinets on either side of the range runs all the way under the oven, not just the filler piece on the front of the cabinets.
3) The cutout for the 30+ year old range is 2+ inches deeper than needed for the new drop-in ranges.
Our options:
1) A new drop in: Replace the counter-top and install a new drop-in range. Counter would not match the counter on the other side of the kitchen.
2) Free-standing range: Trim laminate counter, remove cabinet trim piece from front of cabinet, hopefully be able to cut out the shelf that ran under the old range, wire an outlet for the range and slide in a freestanding range. A lot of manual labor but least expensive, but if it didn’t work would lead to . . .
3) Free-standing range: Pull out all the bottom cabinets (and counters) on that side of the kitchen and replace them (probably with cabinets from Ikea), wire an outlet for the range and slide in a freestanding range.
4) A gas can and a match . . .
