When we bought our house, it came with a Dacor range. (In appliance lingo, a “range” is an oven and a stove top, combined.) I was never particularly happy with it, not the least of which was because the oven door never properly closed. And it was gas.
That might be revisionist, for the record. I now hate gas stove tops. Aside from being terribly inefficient, they just don’t get hot enough. (Worse, they get parts of your pots and pans much hotter than they need to be, leaving burn marks and making them harder to handle.) And maybe your fancy-ass stove top might, but I don’t ever want to go through that again, never mind sniffing methane and inhaling carbon dioxide as I cooked. But I digress…
We knew the range was problematic, but the expense of a new range was beyond consideration. That is, until the front control panel started to go on the fritz.
Dacor, for the record, was a luxury brand out of California. (It’s since become a division of Samsung – basically, a label slapped on otherwise normal ranges in order to raise the price.) I will never understand “luxury” appliance brands, like Sub-Zero and Wolf. These appliances do a thing virtually no different than a generic brand, except for the up-front price and the apparent habit to break down more often (or so say the folks I know who have them). And heaven forbid you need a replacement part for a unit that’s more than a few years old…
The front panel controlled the oven (the burners had regular knobs). First, the Cancel button stopped working. A nuisance, but workable, as you could turn the oven temperature all the way down, and the oven would shut off. Not so much “problem solved” as “managed”. At least until the panel stopped working altogether.
Finding anyone in town who could deal with Dacor was problematic. Google pulled up companies that would have nothing to do with Dacor. But after some effort, found a company that could. As I opened the door to the tech, a man with a formal German accent, I was told it was $130, no matter what happened next. Cheaper than a new range, so why not?
Two steps into the house – the range was visible from the door – he said: “I have bad news.”
The range was at least 20 years old. He knew it on sight as he’d encountered a couple of them before. The only option, after some investigating, was to replace the entire front panel.
BUT.
He was almost certain that wasn’t going to be an option because those parts hadn’t been made in well over a decade. He cleaned up and explained: “If you don’t hear from me again, assume it’s not possible.”
We started looking for a new range. We could still use the stove top – gas doesn’t require the front panel – but it did limit our ability to make some meals. No oven means no pizza, no roast anything larger than could fit in our (albeit ample) toaster oven, no (homemade) bread, no cake.
I paid for a Consumer Reports subscription. When you know you’re at least four figures into something, you do the research. (There’s a reason the segment of the industry is called “Major Appliances”.) We had to discount Trail Appliances entirely, which had been our go-to for years, because they didn’t carry any of the recommended items. The nearby Rona has a sizeable appliance section, but really didn’t hit the ones we were interested in.
Then we spied Visions, an electronics chain that I’m still amazed survives in the Big Box Era. And it was nearly half off the list price. Still four figures, but a lot less of those figures is always a good thing. With assistance from our family friend Dave, who gets a discount at Visions (every little bit helps), we purchased our new range and waited for delivery.
And waited.
And waited.
And that’s when we found out that while Visions had it on sale, it was apparently on sale with LG America. And if you’re looking at the date, you might have already connected that dot. Yep, the Dayglo Douchebag’s tariffs had waylaid our replacement appliance.
It was a month and a half before it arrived in Canada. If there was any benefit to this, it was to prepare for the swap. Notably: the new range is an induction stove top, we’re taking gas out of the picture. And that meant we needed someone to come in and cap the gas line. And that meant coordinating with the guy we trust the most to deal with this house: Nick.
Nick’s been a busy guy. He still does work for us, but I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to find out it’s more out of some sense of guilt than actually making money. He’s always super nice and we get along great, it’s just getting into his schedule that’s sometimes a challenge.
As it happens, we got into his calendar about three weeks ago, which as it happened would be on our fourth day in Ireland. Since we were going to be out of the country, I opted to do as much prep work as possible, trying to get the old range to be removed. I figured I could at least pull the plug out of the wall and turn the gas off. But when I pulled the old range out, I was rather stunned to see that there was no plug – the unit had been hard-wired into the house. Two decades or not, plugs were a thing, so I don’t know who the heck set it up like that. Nick, for his part, was not surprised to hear the news.
We were in Donegal when we got his email. He had come with his plumber, the gas line had been removed and capped, the hard wiring turned into a nice 240 volt plug (something I was very reticent to do myself). But the picture was another matter – the new range would not fit. Despite our measurements, we had not found out that the old range was, in fact, 1/2" narrower at counter level, which had been covered by the stove top overhang.
I swear our house is cursed. Despite all attempts to the contrary, since arriving, we’ve had to:
- Replace the dishwasher (also luxury, after the spring broke and we couldn’t get a replacement part)
- The fridge’s water connection broke and flooded the kitchen, warping the (real) hardwood
- Replace all the toilets (the old ones were crap, pun intended)
- Remove the garburetor (a pointless bit of equipment in our modern composting society, not to mention a bloody hazard)
- Rebuild the fence (a $20,000+ kick in the crotch)
- Replace the hot water tank (which have limited lives with our water)
- Replace both furnaces (we have two; they were 40 years old)
- Cut down two trees
And, of course, replace the range.
When we returned to our home, the range was still sitting out, unable to be hooked up. Nick followed up not long after with some research: the company he usually used for countertops would make a house call to cut the counter … at nearly $1,000. Nick had already dismissed it, but wanted to give me sticker shock. Incidentally, this is exactly why I like Nick.
Nick also doesn’t give up. Through his plumber, he got in contact with a “tile guy” who said he could do the countertop. A couple of hours later, Elliott was at our door. With a smile, he took to the “marble” (neither of us are sure it’s actually marble) with his hand grinder and … that’s the smoothest job I’ve ever seen that wasn’t a CNC cut. The range fit like a glove! I was dancing for joy – we had an oven again, we could bake once again. With a smile, Elliott was out the door barely an hour after arriving.
I marched over to the range, determined to find out what an induction stove top would actually be like. I reached down for the pot drawer … which caught almost immediately on the stove. It stuck out too far by 1 inch … only on the right side (the left side was fine). Did I mention that the house is cursed?
As a temporary measure, I took the drawer fronts off, so we could at least cook. Elliott was back today, cutting off another inch at the back of the pocket, allowing the range to sit back a little further, just enough to make sure the drawers opened. I checked with one of the drawer fronts first, before Elliott left.
Our kitchen is, for now, back to normal, everything working as it should. But if you listen really carefully, there’s a faint ticking, the countdown to the next thing to go wrong in this bloody house.
