Ahhhh – to bake :)

We did it. We installed our new double oven. Thankfully, it came in a week early – it wasn’t supposed to arrive until next week. I am soooo glad it did though. Otherwise I would not have had the time off to install it in one day. So this morning we started reworking the oven cutout. The first thing we had to do was remove a drawer and the bottom of the old oven cavity. We did this as non destructively as possible so we could reuse the bottom in the new cutout. Next came the drawer mounting. This was a bit tricky because the drawer mounting needs to be flush with the cutout trim in order for the drawer hardware to be at the proper width. We preserved that too. After we removed the lower trim from the old cut out and drawer cavity, we had to take a shelf out of the cabinet below the old oven cavity. We were able to preserve the shelf, but not the shelf supports. Finally ready to rebuild the cutout for the new oven unit. It’s a double oven, and both are full sized KitchenAid units. The top is a convection oven. I really like this unit. We did several days of research to find the best rated unit for the money and this one won hands down. It has all the bells and whistles a cook could want. It’s self cleaning, but without the odd interior finish that most self cleaning ovens have. The interior is the standard enamel over steel. the bottom element is hidden beneath the floor of each oven – spills don’t get on it. Makes for super easy clean up.
We measured out the height of the needed cut out and went to work making a support system for the bottom of the oven cavity. This thing is HEAVY. Once the lumber was cut, we did a dry install to make sure everything was level. Then we took out the shelf and worked on the drawer mounts. Once we had them level, I crawled in and installed the drawer hardware and checked how the drawer pulled and returned. Perfect. So we screwed everything down and popped the bottom shelf back in. Then came wiring up the oven. It was a 4 wire system and the house is a 3 wire system. So a quick call to my all knowing father and a look at the instruction manual told us that the breaker was fine and we could wire it up with no problems. Then the hard part. By this time my sons were home from school. Thank goodness, because there was no way that the hubby and I could have lifted this thing alone. Between the two oldest boys and us, we each took a corner and upsy-daisy – in it went. We installed the trim and put the drawer in. WOW! Looked like it had always been there and the cabinet had been made to fit it from the start. We did all the little start up things in the instruction manual and then I put it through a self clean cycle to burn off the new. I can’t wait to use it.
In all, it took us about 12 hours of steady work to get ready and install it. Not too bad for a couple of do it yourselfers. I am very proud of us and our new ovens. We sat down and had a beer. :beer: