2014 Post

Happy 2014! That will take some getting used to.

We saw "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" last night. It was an okay movie. We went with our friends Randy and Karen and our pal Mark joined us as well.

After the movie, we returned here to the house and taught everyone how to play Baseball. (Please refer to one of the Des Moines posts concerning the card game, Baseball.) That kept us going right up to midnight. We opened a bottle of champagne and went out on the front porch to listen to all the illegal fireworks going off.

Everyone left shortly after that and we were in bed by one.

We slept in appropriately but had to get up to face the first home improvement job of 2014, replacing the cook top.

The old one gave out on us just before we left for Iowa. We purchased as inexpensive a replacement as we could find but I have not yet had a chance to install it. 

I had previously disconnected the power to it and had started trying to remove it. The old one was a JennAire brand that had a mostly ineffectual down draft fan. I had quite a job detaching the duct work from the fan because it was connected with many layers of duct tape. After a while, duct tape adhesive turns dusty and quite unpleasant smelling.

 I finally was able to remove the old cook top. Then I had to figure out how to secure the new one.

I nailed a couple of one inch strips of wood to the side of the hole and used those to screw the securing bolts into.

That turned out to work great. 

Next, it was just a matter of connecting the wires and securing the power cables out of the way so pots and pans can be returned to the cabinet. 

It turns out to be much more roomy under the cabinet without that large fan component of the old cook top.

That went very well and I'm now ready to tackle the next home improvement project...whatever it is.