New Stove!

Thanks to my superwonderful grandmother, who offered to help us upgrade to the Maytag double-oven range we'd wanted for a while, our kitchen got a slight makeover today. It still has a ton of cosmetic and other problems, but the new stove ... W00t! As I blogged a few weeks ago, Evelin and had decided it was time to replace the ancient Montgomery Ward stove that conveyed with the house.

Evelin's must-have list centered upon a solid-surface ceramic cooktop and self-cleaning, and while the double ovens would be nice, we couldn't feel like we could justify the expense. After doing some research, we'd decided to go with Figidaire smooth-top range, but my grandmother saw the entry before we bought the oven and offered to upgrade us to the double oven.

So I had to go back and re-research things (it'd been a year or so since we'd last looked at/discussed the Gemini ovens), but ended up deciding to go with the MER2751AAW: two 9" burners, two 6" burners, and two ovens in the space of a standard range.

Of course, nothing could be too easy: Checking around online, Lowes had the best price, but in-store last weekend it was listed as a special-order item and cost about $200 more than the online price. The guy at the store was fairly nonplussed by that and said that I should just buy it online. Next I tried Home Depot, whose online price was $40 more than Lowes, but shipping was about $20 cheaper. Actually, the shipping turned out to be a lot cheaper ... free (well, it was $55, but with a $55 rebate). So I ended up placing the order, and the stove arrived this morning, six days later.

I checked out the installation manual online this morning, saw that I was going to need to get a strain-relief clamp to connect it properly (of course, the old stove wasn't installed with such a clamp, so I couldn't just reuse that one ...), so I ran out and found one before the truck arrived with the new stove.

They had the old stove out and the new one in in less than 10 minutes, leaving me to handle the hookups. Of course, the strain-relief clamp was the wrong size, so I ended up running around to several hardware stores before finding something that would work at an electrical supply store in the District.

It's been powered up for a few hours now and no smells of an electrical fire, so I guess I connected things properly. And for our first meal on the new stove ... we'll have to wait until tomorrow: It was so nice Evelin wanted to grill outside tonight.

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