Facing Head-on the Challenge of New Appliances

Usually I muddle along contentedly with what I consider to be an amazing array of modern conveniences, although I have to admit that most of them are horribly outdated.

But every once in a while, something comes up and I need to buy something new. Then I’m forced to confront just how out of touch I am with the present world.

We’re having the kitchen remodeled. It was never in particularly good shape, even when we bought

the house—the cabinets were fiberboard with some kind of plastic veneer that came off when I tried to clean them, even with just mild soap and water. The fiberboard would absorb water and swell. I’m far from a fanatical cleaner, so I can’t even imagine what would have happened if someone had tried to scrub them with a strong detergent.

Actually, maybe I can. The cabinets and their doors would have dissolved years ago and I would have had to do something about them then, instead of installing magnets to keep the doors sort of closed and trying hard not to spill much on them. As it was, some of the doors wouldn’t close and the plastic veneer was totally gone in a lot of places.

I’ve been saving for ten years toward a kitchen renovation. This year, when a friend who is very handy (and a perfectionist) got laid off, we discussed him handling the job. He does excellent work and comes up with ideas that would never have occurred to me in a million years.

Along with the paint, new floors, new cabinets, etc. we decided to splurge on new appliances. To tell the truth, the only one that still worked right was the refrigerator, and at first I was inclined to not replace it. Refrigerators are expensive. But as I spent money hand over fist I entered this “Devil may care” zone and decided to get a new one. Armed with Consumer Reports and some notes, we headed out to look for what we needed.

First appliance we had to select was a dishwasher. We had a dishwasher in one place we lived, well over twenty years ago, but otherwise I’ve had very little experience with them. This kitchen had never had one. Vivid in my mind was the experience of one of my sisters, who had planned her kitchen to the last detail. She even got two dishwashers. The original reason was because they entertained a lot for business, and when they had to clean up after a party, two dishwashers made sense. As it evolved, though, she discovered that having two dishwashers meant you almost never needed to empty a dishwasher. Just set the table from the clean one, put the dirty dishes in the other one, and every once in a while put away the piece or two that haven’t been used.

Her big problem, though, was that whatever high-end dishwasher she bought beeped when the cycle was done. And every ten minutes thereafter until someone opened the door. Meaning that after they cleaned up after a late party and tumbled into bed, the dishwasher would awaken them and continue to beep all night long until somebody got up to unlatch the door.

So I bought a basic dishwasher that didn’t beep continually. I was greatly puzzled by the set up for putting the utensils in this basket-like thing with a top, until someone explained to me that it was designed to stick the handles of the utensils into slots on the top. This prevented spoons from nesting and similar phenomena. The instructions are confusing, but so far we just set it on “normal” and run it. It works fine.

Next was a refrigerator. I was amazed at what was available. I knew I wanted a bottom freezer. Years

ago, my first mother-in-law had a refrigerator with a bottom freezer. It was so much easier to find things than in a top freezer. And huge hunks of mystery meat don’t fall on bare feet when you remember, at 11 at night, that you need to get something out of the freezer for dinner tomorrow.

What I don’t remember were all these baskets to hold things, most of them a half inch smaller than the packages I’m trying to insert.

Since one of our big problems in this kitchen was always traffic jams at the refrigerator door as people tried to go by, we decided to get a counter depth one. For some mysterious reason, counter depth refrigerators, which are smaller than regular depth ones, are lots more expensive.

They all seem to have icemakers and cold water dispensers. I’ve had my share of “stale” ice from automatic icemakers over the years, as well as a few stories of the peril of owning them. They can leak. All over the freezer and the floor. And in one unfortunate incident, the icemaker malfunctioned, continuing to make ice in voluminous quantities until the ice pushed the freezer door open. The ice continued to spill out on the floor.  The owners were on vacation for a few weeks, and came home to find the refrigerator running continuously, huge amounts of ice piled on the floor in front of it, and even huger amounts melted into water and leaking through the kitchen floor.

We also have very hard water. People who live around here complain that they need to replace those tiny supply lines often. And in our case, the refrigerator is across the room from the water supply. We decided no icemaker and no cold water supply. Of course, we couldn’t find a refrigerator without those features. We had to settle for one without a faucet in the front door to supply the cold water, and have the icemaker removed. I have it carefully stored in a box in case we ever change our mind. Ha.

The other thing I marveled at was refrigerators with a screen in the door.  The advertising booklets said, “This refrigerator lets you mirror your Smart TV, stream music, share from your mobile device, and even check out what's in your fridge from the Wi-Fi-enabled 21.5" touch screen built right into the door.”

Huh? I don’t even know what a “Smart TV” is. I don’t watch much TV. I did watch the Kentucky Derby, but since I don’t know how to turn on the TV, I had to wait for someone else to find it. And since we don’t get very good cell phone service, we don’t have smart phones. Or I-pads. Just Trac phones we can use in an emergency, if we hike or drive to the top of the hill, or, if conditions are just right, climb up on a big stump out by the road.

And how, exactly, does it know what’s in the refrigerator. That sounds like a nice feature, but I have a sneaking suspicion I’d have to somehow tell it what I’d bought, and then remember to tell it when I used something. Or does it have magical powers to let me know I have two outdated containers of strawberry yogurt sitting behind that suspiciously green hunk of cheese?

But the kitchen range was my downfall. I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted, and I knew it would be expensive. Since we are not on a gas line, we went for electric.

Our old wall oven had seen its best days years ago. It had a self-cleaning feature. But when we used it, the oven door never released. The oven itself cooled down, thank goodness, but the special latch that keeps you from opening it while the oven is cleaning just refused to open. Eventually we managed to get it open by undoing the hinges, but that had the unfortunate effect of leaving us with an oven door that came off if you weren’t careful. In several layers. We carefully put the several layers together with duct tape. Perhaps we should have bought new duct tape—all we had was bright red, and it called attention to the fact that the door was not exactly standard.

One Thanksgiving, my sister went to check on the turkey, and almost burst into tears when she ended up with the door in her hands. We reassured her, and put the door back—there was a trick to how you had to insert it and give it a twist to make it stay—but she never came back again for Thanksgiving.

I’m not entirely sure how a broiler element breaks, but ours did. When I tried to get a replacement for

it, I was told that the oven was so old no one stocked replacement parts for it, although the store tried to find one. I suspect they were contacting junk yards. We discovered it’s not too bad to live without a broiler, especially if you can grill things outside. It does mean the first thing you have to shovel out after a snowstorm is the grill, but it works.

The old cooktop was a bit idiosyncratic. The plastic control knobs had all broken, and my search for replacements ran into the same problem as the broiler element. No one seemed to stock any replacements. We could make do with needlenose pliers, although it was very difficult to tell where the dials were set and I was always checking to make sure all the burners were actually off.

We decided to get a one-piece range. I went with my list of “must-have” and “gee-wouldn’t-it-be-nice” features. I debated a smooth top vs. burners. Since I never canned much, and haven’t canned at all in the last few years, I decided to go with the smooth top. (I didn’t realize the manufacturer would recommend against using cast iron cookware, and I’d have to get new pots.) I also wanted two ovens, since it seemed like we were always pulling one thing out of the oven and changing the temperature to finish up something else. Two ovens would eliminate a lot of juggling.

There, in the store, sitting in a place of honor, was my dream range. It had two ovens, both of them with convection features, a warming oven down below, a smooth top, and it was on big sale! The sale brought the price down to where it was very competitive with lesser ranges.

I was smitten. I did a quick check of Consumer Reports and we ordered it, along with the dishwasher and the refrigerator. I cringed at the total, but what had I been saving for, if it wasn’t to get the range of my dreams?

I should have paid more attention to the fact that the wording on the control display was a bit wonky. What kind of manufacturer would instruct the user to select an upper or lower “cavity,” rather than oven? I admit it made my teeth hurt a bit, but I figured I’d get used to it.

Then the appliances were delivered. The instruction book for the range was disturbingly thick. The wording there was a bit wonky, too. I sat down to try to decipher it. And discovered that I had bought something way out of my class.

You can turn on the heating elements with your cell phone. Assuming you have a cell phone. And there’s some kind of a probe to stick in your food. I guess it will tell you when the roast is the right temperature. I haven’t quite figured it out, but it may turn the oven off at that point. The smooth top has a whole variety of settings that I haven’t mastered yet, so I’ve been heating things up in the microwave. So far, I haven’t tried to bake much, partially because the kitchen is still not finished (the new counters are coming on Monday!) and partially because I’m intimidated by the range. Eventually I suppose I’ll learn to take advantage of its features. Or burn the house down trying.

Meanwhile, it’s dinner time. I have to wrangle a frozen pizza from where it is wedged in its slightly too small drawer in the new bottom-of-the-refrigerator freezer and heat it in the upper cavity of the range. If I can manage to figure out how to turn it on and get it to the right temperature.