Continuing in the July spirit of ‘Household Things Going Wrong’ our built-in single oven decided to chew up and spit out its thermostat yesterday which meant lots of raging inferno-style heat, a persistent warning alarm screaming ‘Switch me off NOW!’ and two baked potatoes that were charred black on the outside and rock hard in the centre.
Now, the oven was installed with the kitchen almost seven years ago and this is the first time in my LIFE I’ve experienced an oven breakdown. Also, I think for an oven part to go wrong after barely seven years service is pretty poor especially as the oven is supposed to be a fine specimen of German engineering. But these things happen, and happen it did and I give thanks to St Brigid (of house and home) that we didn’t all go up in flames and dinner was the only casualty.
This isn’t a major disaster because we still have the AGA and a barbecue and a slow cooker and a George Foreman grill and a panini press and a steamer at our cooking disposal. But I would rather have the small oven up and running again as soon as possible, thank you very much.
I spent a short time catastrophising about having to buy a brand new oven (£800??!!!) before looking up the cost of a replacement thermostat (not so bad) and the cost of a Neff engineer coming out to look at it (branded goods taking the mickey prices) and various YouTube clips of ‘Ten Easy Steps to Changing an Oven Thermostat Yourself’ before securing the services of a local domestic appliance repair chap who use to have a shop in town in the place that is now the funeral directors situated on the corner opposite the bus station and next door to ‘The Hippodrome’ our local Wetherspoons. Local repair chap had a spare appointment on Wednesday morning, would that do? Yes please, said I. (Thank you again, St Brigid!)
The biggest aggravation in this mini-saga, however, came from locating the model number of the oven which is needed before you can buy an appropriate spare part. I tried looking for the model number when the oven was still cooling down from being a raging inferno but Andy made me come away and ‘Leave it alone before it sets your head on fire.’ Probably sensible. Anyway, according to the YouTube, the model number could be located in one of three places - just inside the oven door (it’s one of those Slide ‘n’ Hide doors), or on the base of the oven near the front or under the pop-up control panel if we had one, which we don’t.
Do you think I could find the model number in any of these places? No, I could not. It was very frustrating. Luckily, because Andy never deletes any emails, he still had the one from the company from which we purchased the oven seven years ago (who keeps emails for seven years??? They are lucky if they survive seven hours in my in-box) and the email contained the model number! Hurrah!
This afternoon, I thought I’d clean the oven door. I doubt the local repair chap is judgemental about mildly mucky oven doors but you never know. I expect he’s probably seen oven doors in a worse state than ours. But you never know. Anyway, out came the Cif and a sponge and I buffed up the glass, all nice and sparkly. And then I thought, I’ll clean the bit under the base of the oven (where the door does its slidin’ ‘n’ hidin’) as far as I can reach, whilst I’ve got a wet sponge to hand.
And as I cleaned I thought, what’s that smooth and shiny thing emerging from the dust? Only the bloomin’ registration plate with the model number stamped on it, that’s what! Really, I must have words with the cleaning maid…
I leave you not only with dried and crinkled hands (Note to Self: purchase rubber gloves) but with the lovely view this evening from our dining room table and through the doors out onto the courtyard. It’s a view of which I shall never grow tired and which makes me sigh with deep joy…even though I’ve just noticed Nell has left her frisbee lying in the middle. She never clears up after herself…
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KJ