Changing a built-in oven.

[Doghouse Riley]

If a domestic appliance is going to fail then it will choose the most inconvenient time. Like our Baumatic oven which wouldn't heat up at 7.30pm on Friday night.

It's ten years or more old now and went wrong about five years ago and we had to wait two weeks for the "right" part to come from Germany. So I decided we might as well have a new one.
It's coming from Curry's tomorrow.
The Baumatic replaced a Smeg my wife chose, we'd had for about for four years which she began to hate, (anything for a quiet life).

I've declined Curry's offer of "connecting three wires," to the cooker box in the cupboard above it for £90.
And taking away from the old one for £20.
I also turned down the extended guarantee for, "an arm and a leg."

We're ready for it. The old one went down the tip on Saturday.

When ordering a new built in oven you have to check the sizes as lately some are slightly larger than the most popular size of aperture.

There's very little space between the oven housing unit and a kitchen unit the other side of the back door.

Fitting it won't be a problem as when I fitted the Baumatic I'd made this stand on castors. The top is the same height as the shelf on which the oven sits. For over ten years it's been in the garage serving as additional storage. But I kept it as I knew it might be needed again.
Just a question of putting the oven on it and pushing it up against the housing unit after feeding the mains cable through the access hole in the cupboard above it. Then slide the oven in. "Simples." It was the reverse for getting the old one out, (remembering to turn off the kitchen ring main from the consumer unit before starting!)

I checked the old one before taking it down the tip, there was a lot of browning of the insulation around the controls, so I made the right decision. The oven gets rid of some heat through the front but some heat can be trapped in the unit. The unit is open at the back so some heat can travel up between the wall and the back of the unit.
People like me who like to box in over our kitchen units, don't help that's why I fitted this vent on the side of the "boxing in." Some hot air will come out of it.
There's an extractor fan in the window three feet away.

I'm looking firward to tomorrow night as we'll have our "Sunday roast," we've been living on "M&S Chinese meals for five days," cooked in the microwave.

 

[Ian]

We're currently in the middle of getting our kitchen done and are also living off microwave meals, BBQs and takeaways .

£90 for connecting it up!? What a job, I'm tempted to retrain and connect appliances for a living... I'll do a discount, 2 for £150 .

I love that you've still got the original wheeled stand for fitting it first time around.

 

[Doghouse Riley]

Thanks for that.

There's a lot of things you can do that can help you manage a difficult job on your own.#

This is my wife's vacuum cleaner storage cupboard under the stairs. There's five and a steam mop for the kitchen floor and a mains and battery one upstairs for that floor.

The number deserves an explanation, there's mains and battery. The mains ones are always more powerful but are harder for her to manage on some days due to her MS. So on some days she use the lighter battery ones.
It's "not accepting defeat" that keeps her going.

Anyway, it's where the tumbledryer lives, vented through an airbrick in the outside wall. It sits on top of a cupboard accessed from outside. I keep my leccy golf trolley and other golf stuff in it.
The door to this cupboard is quite narrow and getting the dryer out for any reason, like changing it or fitting a new belt would be difficult.
But I fixed a baton on the opposite wall, you can just about see it , decades ago and I made a temporary shelf from some scrap bits of laminate.
It's just a case of sliding one end of the shelf under the dryer and resting the other end on the baton. I can then slide the dryer out onto the shelf and then just pick it up and pull it out. The shelf hasn't been required for a number of years. "But I know where it is."

Similarly, I have a ramp which I made to get my jukeboxes into our summerhouse fifteen years ago. It has side guides as these things weigh around 300lb and I wouldn't want one sliding off sideways. It connects with the top of these steps and has quite a shallow fall as it's around six feet long. I keep it in the garage in case it's ever needed again.

I also have a sack truck for shifting anything heavy.