Now We’re Cooking With Fire…Um, Electricity!

We are back up and running in the kitchen.  Whew, I was really sweating this one big time. There is no way I would have survived the holidays without my oven.  I realized there was a problem after trying to heat a couple of casseroles about two weeks ago. My sister was here with her kids and I was making dinner. The oven never really felt hot, and it didn't cut off so I knew it wasn't getting up to temp.  We ended up warming everything that night with the broiler. I knew the broil element worked and I had the oven thermometer replaced the week before Easter.  Why do my appliances keep staging revolts right before major holidays? Here's a picture of my model, if only my cabinets were that nice.

The next night I turned on the oven again, this time it was on for over an hour and never reached 350⁰.  I came to the conclusion it had to be the element.  While considering a major appliance purchase weeks before Christmas a co-worker told me she ordered an element for her oven online and changed it herself. Well, shoot I could do that. I looked up the model and serial number online and had the part delivered to my door.

First thing this morning I got to work.  I began by having the hubby stand in the closet and shut off the breaker.  It has a label on it, but I wasn’t the one who put it there so I didn’t want to leave anything to chance.  I turned the upper and lower oven on and seconds later he threw the switch, this way there was no doubt that the power to the oven was off. 

Next I removed the racks and put up my work light. My son picked a light out for me when we were shopping, the magnet comes in handy. 

I removed the screws from the bad element and gently worked the wires out from behind the insulation. 

The instructions I read said to be careful not the rip out the insulation, the last thing I need are cold spots in my oven.  I was careful but it still took some tugging to get the wires to come out.  The leads on my model have a 90⁰ angle and pulling straight out would have pulled the insulation through. 

Once the wires were free it was as easy pulling off the leads and attaching them to the new element. Okay, okay the husband may have helped; he has longer arms and could get a better grip on them than I could. 

With the element attached I gently finagled the wires back through the insulation and secured the element with the shiny new screws that came with it.  We flipped the power back on and I sat in front of the oven holding my breath. 

It works, just look at the shiny red glow.  I turned it up to 300⁰ and the element shut off when it reached temperature.  Just to be sure I turned it to 400⁰ with the same result. 

Oh happy day, I have a working oven again.  After getting a look at the pictures of the repair I realized it was time for a self cleaning cycle.  I ran the self cleaning cycle, after 3 hours of heating and another 2 hours cooling this is what it looks like.

 

When this cools completely I will wipe it out with a wet rag and this kitchen is open for some holiday business.  We might not get 12 edible gifts in, but I will do my best to get to as many as I can. 

I'm not sure why I never considered doing this work myself, but I'm glad I did.  So thank you to my co-worker and friend for giving me the idea and the courage.