What Is My Kitchen Range Doing. . .

On the patio? Is my sweetheart about to build an outdoor kitchen? As much as I would love that idea, this is not exactly what I had in mind. And it's still too cold in our part of the world to even begin to think of cooking outside. So what's going on? Why did he move it outside?It's waiting for the used appliance man to pick it up! I have a 'new' stove in my constantly-in-process kitchen.We have been working on the re-do of our kitchen for what seems like years. Really we have! It's been done in bits and pieces as we could afford it or when we finally decided how we wanted the next step to be. And then there were times when grown children and grandkids moved in for a time and it wasn't wise to tear into wiring or plumbing or disengage the kitchen with little ones in the house. Now - we think!!! - we're nearing the finish. There's more to do. Soon. Hopefully!

We shopped for new stoves and ran into problems replacing our drop-in stove with a free-standing range. The counter is lower than standard. Just a bit. I wouldn't be happy with my stove standing taller than my counter top. We shopped for and priced drop-in ranges. Oooh, they are much more spendy. We discussed and debated and thought. I decided I could live with the old stove until it gave up. The problem: some of the burners were not level and there was no way to level them. They wanted to do their own thing! Not a problem with most food but try to fry an egg in a pan that goes downhill. We compensated for it by holding the handle until the egg began to cook. In our hearts we really wanted to replace the old dark stove with a new white one.

A couple of weeks ago I had a sudden thought. Look on Craigslist and see what kitchen stoves you find. I typed in "Drop in kitchen stove", hit search and Viola! There it was. Just posted a short time before. It seemed perfect except for one thing. In the picture it appeared to be the perfect size but the measurements given were too narrow for the opening in our cabinets. The seller listed the make and model number so I quickly searched to see what I could learn about this range. It is currently still on the market! Good. And the measurements were exactly what we needed. A couple of quick emails to and from the seller and he discovered that he had mis-measured. We made arrangements to go see the stove and soon we were there. It was perfect. Just what we needed. The seller was remodeling the kitchen in their nearly-new home and his wife wanted a different stove. The builder had installed this stove before they bought the house. The stove was in great shape, not used much and perfect for our little kitchen. We paid the man and headed home. Happy with our stove and eager to see how it would fit into our slowly emerging 'new' kitchen. The seller offered to refund our money if, for any reason, we weren't happy with it. The best part was the price. This stove lists for around $1,000. We paid $95!! Can't go wrong with a deal like that.One of these days I'll dig out pictures of the old kitchen so you can see what we have done. Big changes. More to come. Overhead cabinets, an over-the-stove microwave and a chance to get some pretty things out of boxes in the garage and attic. Oh, I just can't wait. Now we want to replace the refrigerator. Craigslist, here we come! Again!