If nothing else

If nothing else good happened for me today, at least this did:

I got home, had a message from Central Electric. The pieces for the oven door handle were in. So I went down there, paid my 43 dollars and change (9.75% sales tax in my town), came back home.

And I sat down for a bit first. I felt like I needed to recoup: it's hot, drivers were BAD this afternoon (Central Electric is, like, seven blocks from me. If it weren't eleventy-hundred degrees out I could easily have walked it). And I had some interactions with needy or underprepared students today and I was tired.

But I also knew I needed to fix it. So I grabbed the toolkit Dana loaned me, and figured, "here goes nothing."

First up: this is the broken state



That peg you can see sticking out to the left is the remnants of the old endcap. The guy at the shop agreed with me that probably the repeated cycles of heating and cooling (even though the door doesn't get nearly as hot as inside the oven) probably let to the plastic perishing and that's why it broke.

(He also teased me a little about my outbound phone message - I had forgot but I composed it at a time when I was inundated with telemarketing calls and I said something like "If you are a real call, leave your number, I'll get back to you. If you're a telemarketer, I won't call you back, and I'm probably screening my calls so I won't answer for you." He did say: Well, at least you were polite about it.)

Anyway. It took a lot of doing (I think I need stronger reading lenses, and yes, I have to get in to the eye doctor some time) before I found the right bit; at first I was all "oh no, are the bolts stripped?" They have a weird six-pointed star hole in the head. But finally I found the right bit (I couldn't see the star shape well and was trying a five-pointed star shape at first).

So then I got them loosened.

And this happened



Oh no.

Yes, the door is filthy inside, I know. And I didn't stop to clean it because I was afraid I'd not be able to fix it and anyway I got some of the insulation fibers you see there in my thumb and yes it itches.

The potholder on the floor is because I had to grab and hold the stumps of the old endcaps when I was loosening the bolts, and holding them bare handed threatened to tear up my hands.

Then, after all that, I realized there were two tiny bolts still in there that had bits of the plastic flashing clinging to them. So I had to get my needlenose pliers and crush it so it would come off (kinda like  Dr. Jan Pol castrating a bull, now I think of it) so I could fit the new endcaps on.

At that point, I realized this was getting to be a Dirty Job, so I skinned off the dress I was wearing (didn't want to ruin it) and wrapped up in a towel because really, who changes clothes for an indoor job that should take five minutes at most?

So anyway. Then I had: the two halves of the door to put back together, the first endcap to get on, the actual handle (a metal bar) to juggle into place while simultaneously putting on the second endcap.

And that's the point where I realized I could have used another pair of hands, really.

But: none were forthcoming. (And once again, I feel sad Steve is gone: he was right down the street and if I'd stopped to throw on a t-shirt and jeans and then call him, I bet he'd have come down and held stuff for me, and probably cracked some joke about how I still had his mother's stove). And there was no one I could call; the few other people who MIGHT help me would still have been at work (odd hours) and anyway, i didn't want to make them drive all the way across town.

So, like so many other things, I gritted my teeth and did the thing alone. It took some juggling and finally I just used my hip to sort of pin the handle in place while I did the rest, but:

I did the thing:



It doesn't feel quite as solid as the original handle (there may have been more pins on the old endcaps, and I'm willing to bet I later find another one of those tiny metal rivets in the pan drawer at the bottom), but if I don't count on grabbing the handle to keep from falling again (I can always grab the top of the stove, I suppose), I should be good.

But yeah. That's a job I might rather have paid someone to do, and I would have much rather had some help. But at least it's done.