Sunday January 11: Project: Replacing the Stove!

It was time.

When we were on Guppy this summer using the electric range, Steve realized how much the efficiency of our stove on Yesterday's Dream has slipped. Do we put $$ into repairs or do we move to something else?

Sad to say I get hooked sometimes on those infomercials on TV and happened upon one that was selling portable induction burners. It actually sounded quite interesting. For info on induction burners: click here.

While in Rhode Island in September, we had one sent to us while visiting Matt and Wendy. First of all, it was GREAT entertainment value and secondly, Steve fell in love with cooking on it!

Decision made: yank the stove. Replace with two portable (but semi built-in) units and a convection oven/microwave that was recommended by Linda on Symmetry (we completed this project while we were still in Jacksonville in October). Step one: pull the stove!

WOW - what an amazing space we were going to create for storage!!

Next was to make good use of all of this new space by doing some partitioning.

First, though, determine how to "build in" two portable cooktops.

Steve used a cardboard cutout to figure out how much of the wood trim around the old stove needed to be cut to accommodate the new units.

The two units would sit next to each other - with the top and side edges resting on the wood framing. Each unit's main support would be on cross braces using the four feet on the bottom of the unit.

Lots of careful measurements were taken before there was any cutting of wood :-)

By the end of day 2, the units were temporarily in and usable!


A stir-fry with rice noodles was, as is all of Steve's cooking, perfect :-)





Since it was after 5, no more cutting was allowed (rule from Safety Matt - learned by experience a number of years ago and reinforced by us through numerous not-so-good consequence of ignoring said rule :-)  ).



Job to be continued the next day! In the meantime, there was a sunset to enjoy .....