Saying farewall to an old friend

There comes a time in every relationship where, whether through death, fate, or ennui, it comes time to end it.

Oh, might be a good time to mention that I'm NOT talking about us - or the kitties for that matter. They're fine, if you can call yelling at us all the time and barfing on the rug every other day "fine", and I'm sure they do.

Where was I? Oh, right, the end of a relationship.

This particular relationship started way back in 2005, even before we began the renovations at the old place. It ended last weekend and to be honest, I'm not sure we're really over it yet.

One of the first things we had to do to the old house was replace the furnace. At the time, it made a lot of sense to also replace the unbelievably crappy stove that came with the house, and so the War Department forked over her ENTIRE bonus cheque (that she got when the company she worked for got bought out) and bought us the most wonderful gas range. Here it is on the very day they installed it:



She's a beauty, eh? Five burners, flat cooktop, convection oven, warming tray, all the bells and whistles.

We loved that stove from the moment we turned it on. We loved that stove when we cooked our Christmas dinners in it. We loved that stove to make quick meals during the week. We loved that stove so much that when we bought our new house, we specifically excluded it from the list of appliances that were to be included in the sale of the old house. We even paid for a professional gas fitter to come over and disconnect it, and wrapped it in blankets so the movers wouldn't scratch the finish. They loaded it carefully into the truck, and just as carefully unloaded it into our new garage.

Where it promptly sat for twelve months.

Oh, we shunted it around from one corner of the garage to the other, always moving it carefully and taking great pains not to scratch the finish. There wasn't much we could do: the new house didn't have gas service, and what with having to do the roof and everything else, the new gas line wasn't in the budget right away. So our poor, beautiful range sat in the garage while we cursed and hated the piece of crap that Frank left us.

Well, as I mentioned in the last post, we FINALLY had enough money to get the gas line put in. So after a fair amount of back-and-forth between and with Terasen and the local municipality (you'd think they do this all the time, but it just seemed like everything we were doing was the first time anyone had ever brought it up: "Natural gas? To your house? I've never heard of such a thing! Oh, wait, here's a form. Well, I'll be...") we finally got the gas line run. We even had some pictures of the process, thanks to our Crazy Neighbour™ who monitored the whole thing for us while we were at work.

Which I seem to have misplaced... oh well, they'll turn up.

Anyway, the gas line was installed, the fireplace was installed, and all we needed to do was install our old friend the gas range and we'd be - in the inimitable words of my friend Steve - "golden". Only one small problem.

Well, probably more like a half-a-dozen or so small problems. Small, brown, furry, problems.

You see, one of the side... er, benefits? of having so much wildlife in the neighbourhood is that some of said wildlife wants to live inside with you. Where it's warm. Failing that, they'll happily live somewhere sort-of-inside, where it might not be as warm, but where there are no predators and there's a good source of food. Like, say, a garage. Where there are bags of birdseed and peanuts (oh, someone PLEASE ask Amy about the peanuts), and nice tight crevices where they can build their nests. For example, in the side cavity of a crappy old freezer, or a beat-up old chest of drawers, or, well, a very nice stove.

Yeah. We had mice.

We actually had an exterminator come in a month or so after we bought the place, and he laid some traps in the attic (none of which were ever sprung, so THAT was good news) and in the garage. The ones in the garage were quite successful at catching little mouses, but not so much at not killing them, which upset the War Department somewhat. So we took the exterminator's advice and let the cats out into the garage once in a while so they could rub on things and leave the smell of a predator. It must have worked, at least a little, because the last trap never did get sprung, and I figured the mice had probably found a less-cat-infested home.

Unfortunately, the damage had already been done, and they had made themselves a nice little home in the insulation in our beautiful gas range. Well, okay, we thought, we'll just have to clean it all out and replace the insulation. And when we called around to ask for parts, and looked online for advice, it seemed we certainly weren't the first people to have mice in a stove. So we ordered new insulation for it and once it (finally!) arrived, we asked our good friend Mr. Awesome to come over and give us a hand - he used to fix appliances, and was willing to work for beer; I call that a win-win.

We started taking the stove apart on a chilly Friday night a little more than a week ago, and it quickly became apparent that the damage was more extensive than we thought. The first few panels came off easily enough, and were put aside to be wiped down later.

Once we got the cooktop off, however, we found out just how bad it was:



And then it got worse:



And worse:







And then we found out that the idiots at the part store where we bought our replacement insulation only gave us enough insulation to do the top and sides, and not the back. So we left the carcass of our poor stove surrounded by its pieces, and waited until the next morning, when we could start calling around and hopefully find another piece of insulation.

Well, the next morning brought good news and bad news. The good news was that the War Department talked to an exceptionally knowledgeable and helpful person at West Coast Parts (not, unfortunately, the place we had ordered the original insulation from or we might have saved ourselves a lot of trouble). The bad news was pretty much everything the guy told her.

You see, mouse pee is really, really, REALLY stinky. It's also pervasive, and mildly corrosive. The end result is that the smell is really difficult to get out - especially if the afflicted appliance were ever to get hot. You know, like a STOVE. Essentially, the only way to get the smell out - even from a metal panel - is to soak the part in a strong solution of janitorial cleaner (bleach doesn't work, apparently) and then let it dry for up to two weeks.

To cut a sad story short, after speaking to the technician and re-evaluating the extent of our infestation, we came to the reluctant conclusion that there was just no way we were EVER going to get the damn thing clean. The mouse pee was all over the electrical components, the burners, the gas lines, everything. It had seeped into the welds in the frame and the back of the box, and even onto the heat deflectors INSIDE the oven.

I think if it had been an electric stove, it might have been different, but we had to take all the gas lines off to get the panels apart, and there would have been no way to even test the thing without putting it all back together and installing it.

And so it was with a heavy heart and a great deal of reluctance that I loaded all the pieces (except for a few that I forgot, damn it) into the back of the pickup and hauled it all up to Hartland where it went straight into the recycling bin.

Yeah. Top of the line, and not even six years old. Finished. Talk about your expensive lessons. Anyway, I'm still too verklempft to continue. Throwing out that beautiful, wonderful, awesome stove really, really, really sucked.

(I think the worst part is that now I have to clean the burnt stuff out of the crappy old stove that I spilled turkey drippings in over the holidays. Stupid delicious turkey.)

Tune in next time for pictures of our next project (which we've already started)!