Slightly Deranged

A few weeks ago the enchilada casserole turned out extra-crispy which we thought was just the result of lack of attention, but then we noticed that the turned off oven was still going strong and further that it was the broiler, which hasn't worked in years. When the smoke alarm went off we decided our only option was to flip it off at the breaker, which did put a stop to it. Subsequent tests revealed that even if the oven was never turned on at all the broiler started heating up immediately. We could use the stove top, but only for about twenty minutes before the house started filling with smoke, or we could broil something very quickly. 

We put in a call to our friendly local appliance repair company, who have fixed our stove many times before, and they replied, without even looking at it, that if it was doing that now it was beyond further repair. So we adapted for a few days, doing a lot of scrambled eggs on the pancake griddle and tea in the microwave and soup in the instant pot. On particularly brave days we would cook a very quick supper on the stove top. The rest of the time we kept it flipped off at the breaker.

It's never a good time to replace an appliance, but right now is a particularly bad time as, if we ever get past Phase 1 of our building project to add on enough bedrooms and living space for Bookworm and Rocketboy to join us, at some point we will get to Phase 3 of making the kitchen fully wheelchair accessible at which point a new stove will be needed that would not fit into the current configuration. 

However, we were alerted to a free stove along the side of the road and DOB rounded up people to load it up, bring it home, and after much straining and some swearing, haul it all the way up and around the back and get it into the kitchen. 

While this had been going on, Deux had been making supper and noted that, for the first time in a week or more, the broiler had not come on. But that just seemed like a fluke, and the project was too far committed to withdraw, so we pulled the old stove out, brought the new stove in and . . . discovered that there was more than one type of stove plug. Some of our helpers considered swapping the cords between the stoves but thought better of it and finally with enough googling we found out that there were adapters that could be used and arrive in a few days. 

In the meantime we had two stoves in a kitchen that definitely was not designed for two stoves and no one wanted to drag the other stove back outside somewhere, so we plugged the old stove back into the old stove slot, shoved the new stove into a corner where it has converted the kitchen from difficult to navigate in a wheelchair to difficult to navigate in corporal form, and resumed using the new stove. 

Since then, the broiler has never come back on. We don't trust it. We try not to leave the breaker flipped but sometimes we forget. I baked gingerbread, which takes an hour of steady temperature, and it came out perfectly. We still don't know if the other stove even works because no one wants to drag the now-functioning stove out of the wall and plug it in to test. 

I am not sure what the moral is here but hey, at least we're not out the money for a new stove. Yet.