It's never a short story, of course.
At Thanksgiving, the door of my 25-year-plus old range broke. I say 25-y+ because I bought the house that long ago, and this is the stove/range that was in the kitchen when I bought it. Anyway, rather than pay for a service call and risk having the repair-man say "replace it" anyway, I ordered a new range with my Christmas money. Besides, I've been wanting to update my kitchen for 25 years. It's time for a new stove.
The range wandered around the country for several weeks, but was finally delivered last Friday.
Based on the trials and tribulations of my BFF, who had her 1947 home's kitchen remodeled last year, I suspected that the gas line into my 1949 home's kitchen would need updating, too. I called the plumber and made an appointment for this morning. Expectedly, he was an hour late. Unexpectedly the new "standard sized" stove wouldn't fit through the kitchen door after we easily moved the old one out. The face plate of the new stove curves out, and the back has a bump out for wiring, and the total is just half an inch too much. Plumber and I pulled the trim off the kitchen doorframe and squeezed it through. Two hours down. Expectedly the old gas valve was not up to current code, nor the 20+yo code, nor the 1970s code. It has to be replaced. He shut down the gas at the meter to work on it. So now, January 26 but fortunately a day in the 50s, we don't have furnace or water heater as well as the stove. Unexpectedly, he didn't have the part, the two local hardware stores didn't have it, the nearest town's Lowe's didn't have it, and he had to drive to Santa Fe. Three hours later, now it's late afternoon. He replaces the valve in the kitchen, hooks up the stove, and tries to turn the gas back on to check for leaks. The valve at the meter was jammed and, after a bit of "work" darned if it didn't need replacing, too. At this point I'm not even surprised that he didn't have the part, and two hours later I'm even less surprised when he got back with the WRONG part. He headed off to try another place. An hour later he called, it's too late and he can't get the part until morning.
Okay, it's past 7:30 at night now, fully dark, and getting cold. We haven't eaten because we have been waiting for him to come back to the house and finish up. And we don't have gas. Unexpectedly for a January night on a mountain side in northern New Mexico, the forecast is for a warm (relatively speaking) low of 35 degrees. My pipes won't freeze. I'm glad our piddling little winter storm (4 inches of snow, a couple of 10 degree nights and 20 degree days) headed East (Sorry New York) and left us with a January thaw. I'm also glad I installed a pellet stove a few years ago.
We got Chinese take-out. And we'll be sleeping in the living room in front of the pellet stove. And the bill for the plumber is over $900 so far.
Catherine