I know what you're thinking. It's a slow news week if she's blogging about her stove. That's not entirely true. Actually, we have friends in town and we're having a great week, but more on that later. The truth is that the stove IS big news, mostly because I've been wishing for one for so long. There are many pluses to being a renter, the first of which is that it's FREE. Dayven's employer generously pays all of our bills - our rent, our utilities, they even give us money for groceries - as incentive for uprooting our family and moving to a foreign country. The other plus is it's not your house. Something breaks? Oh well, call the landlord. Something spilled on the carpet and left a stain? Oops, not the end of the world. We try our best to be neat, but with a toddler and a puppy, things happen. The downside of being a renter is, well, it's not your house. There are things that don't work great, need to be replaced/upgraded, or just don't look all that aesthetically pleasing. Things that you'd take care of it was your house. Instead you're at the mercy of someone else. One of these was our stove. It has been a piece of junk since the day we moved in. It was an old JennAir, with a grill feature on one half, which I hated. What is the point of this? I mean, if I want to grill, I'm going to go outside and use the grill. Since we never used the grill side, we were basically always cooking with just two burners. I was slightly annoyed by this, but had just become used to it, until the starter on one burner went out. Now I had to resort to turning on the gas and using a lighter, not unlike how you might light your grill. Dangerous? Just a little. The oven was completely unpredictable and never seemed to be even close to being the right temperature. I bought a thermometer to place inside, hoping to control it, but what temperature it would end up was always a best guess. As Dayven said, we usually just cranked it to 500 degrees and hoped for the best.
One of our hot water heaters had incidentally gone out the week before and our dishwasher was also starting to act up. I was fed up with shoddy appliances. I hate to be a complainer, but I had finally had enough and called the landlord to report my issues. He surprised me by getting right on it and we had a new stove delivered by the end of the week. He reassured us that the plumber who was coming to install the new hot water heater (and supposedly moonlighted as an appliance installer) would come back to install the new stove once the granite was cut down to accommodate. Dayven said when the plumber came to install the water heater, he was high as a kite and a there was a large cloud of smoke billowing in after him. His response when Dayven asked if he had ever installed a stove was "No dude, but I'm sure I can probably figure it out..." Um, no thanks, dude. I've had some experience with shafty plumbers so I know better. Dayven is pretty handy so he just installed it himself. She's fantastic and cooks like a gem, just the right temp every time!
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