Newness

This weekend my husband installed a new gas range for me.  It was a Christmas present and being one for doing things himself because he hates to spend money, he said he would install it in January.  Therefore it sat in the shed since a few days before Christmas until Friday.  It is Frigidare, which really made me laugh because after all they made refrigerators and making stoves is the total opposite.  Ha Ha, oh well I guess you had to be there. Anyway, my husband found it by searching online at the Sears Appliance store near Abington.  It was a floor model and almost 50% off the regular price, so we didn’t get a box and therefore it fit in the back of his Jeep and we didn’t have to pay for delivery. 

So finally, and mostly due to the fact we have a contractor friend who kept bugging him, on Friday I came home to a really messy kitchen.  The old electric stove was taken out of the cabinet and on the floor, the kitchen table and chairs were pushed over to one side, there were tools all over the place, and the new gas stove was sitting in front of the refrigerator still wrapped in plastic.  My husband and our friend were discussing where the gas line should come up through the floor and determining what parts they needed.  Why they decided to start at 3pm on a Friday was beyond me, but I was not going to complain.  They went out for parts about 30 minutes before the store closed and came back about 2 hours later armed with beer, supplies, and pizza.  They proceeded to drill holes in the floor where the gas line would come up and where the new outlet would be.  The old stove took a 220 line and the new one required a 160 line so a new line had to be run.  Fortunately, my husband had planned for the eventual addition of a gas range and had his plumber friend put in a junction when they installed the gas dryer.  Because of that the installation was somewhat simple.

So now I am the proud owner of a gas range with 5 burners and it is just lovely.  Just having the stove makes the kitchen look newer.  Our contractor friend told me that he has an extra dishwasher from a job he did and doesn’t need and it happens to match the stove so maybe for my upcoming birthday I will get that installed!  Before too long maybe the new floor and will be put in and possibly new cabinets.  Most people do a new kitchen all at once, but if you have a husband like mine piecemeal is probably the best I can hope for. 

Kitchen Makeover?

We had to buy a new refrigerator last night. For the last few weeks, I have noticed that the freezer in our 57 year old fridge was not always housing frozen foods. I would reach in one day and the popsicles that I like to eat were fine and then the next day, they were so soft I had to eat them with a spoon. I made a comment to my husband about it and he merely grunted. I tried to explain to him that it is very unhealthy to thaw and re-freeze meat, but that didn’t do the trick. I guess when he came home yesterday from work and there was a puddle around the refrigerator and everything in the freezer was a soggy mess, he agreed that maybe this time he couldn’t fix it.

My husband, although I love him dearly, is a tightwad. He tries to fix things instead of getting new and gets all upset when we have to buy clothes for our son. I totally agree with him most of the time, but sometimes he can be really trying. Take the refrigerator for example. He is very conscience of the environment and while that is great, he didn’t seem to understand that the old one we had was using a lot of energy and probably not good for the environment, and that it was probably costing us more than a new one would. The kitchen in the house we live in is the result of a 1960s DYI effort. The cabinets, even though they match, are not very useable and they are ugly. The dishwasher is rotted out, and the stove is electric, which I hate. The corner cabinets are hard to get into and things get lost in there. When they put the cabinets up, they blocked the one big window in the room and the kitchen is very dark unless you have all the lights on.

So now he’s talking about doing a complete kitchen makeover. Coming from someone who is a tight as he is with the money, it’s a complete surprise. Of course everything is going to be a DYI effort (although his work is far superior to the person who originally did it). Then again, he can be a lot of talk and no action. So we will see where this goes.