I did it

Insert mental picture of me here in the Rosie the Riveter pose. (I have too much I have to do this afternoon to have time for an actual cosplay of that, and I don't think I currently own a red bandanna)

Anyway. I picked up the new heating unit after school yesterday afternoon ($44, which seems cheap) at Central Electric (which I highly recommend).

I got the toolkit from Dana at Bell Choir (and I may need to ask for my own for Christmas; it's a handy thing to have).

Didn't have the energy to tackle it Monday evening, but I decided to try it today at lunchtime (better light, because you WON'T have the oven light - I contemplated unplugging it but just throwing the breaker to "off" was easier).

I changed out of my dress (had to anyway: I have to get soil shortly) but didn't put a shirt back on on  the grounds I was going to be reaching into my (admittedly grubby, though I've tried to clean it) oven. Got my camp lantern (battery powered) and set it up so I could see what I was doing.

Unscrewed the bolts holding the "cover plate" at the back on, pulled it out - I was envisioning a "plug and play" thing like with the burners on the top, but NOPE - two more little bolts holding the copper contacts to wires (one yellow, one red).

(Now I think of it, the dude at Central Electric did warn me "there will be two other little screws once you've taken the backplate off" and I guess that's what he meant)

So I kind of rocked back on my heels, and wondered, "Can I do this" and I shrugged, figuring the effort of finding someone I could hire would be a lot, so I tried unscrewing the bolts. Got them partway with the tool and was able to finger turn them the rest of the way (it's tight back in there and the tool doesn't fit that well).

Pulled the broken part out, and then carefully set in the new one. Fished the wires back out from the hole (they had slipped back) and carefully screwed first one, then the other, bolt in (and how worried was I about dropping and losing one? Really worried.)

Got that done, pushed it in, pushed the backplate up against the back oven wall.

Threw the breaker back to on, nervously turned it on.

It smoked a bit but I knew to expect that - factory coating. (I may cycle the oven a few times before I actually use it to burn off the stink)

Then it started glowing, like it was supposed to. Came up to the set temperature (350) and shut off, so I turned it off.

I FEEL SUPER POWERFUL NOW BECAUSE I FIXED MY OVEN WITHOUT SHOCKING MYSELF OR BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE.

I will say I should buy an oven thermometer (never had to worry about it before) because my sense from the one test is the unit may run a bit hotter than the dial temperature, and so I may need to adjust when I bake.

But yeah. $44 and 15 or so minutes of my time to fix a thing that might cost a hundred or more if I got a guy in.

(Of course the danger of this is now if people know I can do this, I will get asked to....)