We did it, by golly!

Yesterday evening, Ellen went out to take postcards to the post office, and shortly after she left, the stove began to beep. Ellen had said nothing about the oven. I turned off the timer, and the display said PRE. And it just stayed there. I opened the oven door, and there was a pie in the oven. It did not look baked. Clearly, it was supposed to be baked, but the oven was not getting hot. I turned it off and turned it on again: it just said PrE. it never got to 350° or whatever. This was not normal. Eventually, Ellen got home and we checked everything out. it became clear that the oven heating element was broken. This was a disaster: Ellen had agreed to bake a birthday cake for the women's group that all have November birthdays. That had to be done Saturday. What to do? Friday (today) Ellen was going to meet Katie for lunch in Greenfield again, and we both had a Guilford small choir sing at Langdon place in Keene. There seemed to be no time to fix it! Ellen pulled the stove out to try and find the Serial # plate. Couldn't see it. We went to bed frustrated. This morning, Ellen left for Greenfield and I got busy. Using the iPhone I queried oven element replacements for Hotpoint ranges locally and was told "Cocoplum." We know them. I called, found out where the serial number on the stove is located, found it, couldn't get close enough to read it, took a picture of it with the phone, read that easily, gave it to Cocoplum, they looked it up, and BINGO! They had an element. We could pick it up easily coming back from Keene. I had to turn two hex screws to get the old element out. Did I have the right wrench? I looked and looked. YES! I found it! I was just getting the second screw out when Ellen came home. She was amazed! We went to Keene for the sing, came back and picked up the element - no problem ($99!), came home. The element had to be detached from two wires. I dimly remembered doing this once before. I had had to take a metal plate off the back of the stove to access the connection. Ellen checked out a YouTube "how-to" video for doing this job on a GE Hotpoint range. But the range was different from ours - a different connection. So I took the metal plate off and sure enough - there were the two connectors, very accessible. It was fairly easy then to take out the old element and put in the new one. But then we had to put the range back in place. It sits on a little platform we had to have built back when we raised the counter. We figured that out, turned on the stove, turned on the oven - BINGO again! It worked. Ellen could bake her pie and her cake. Good for us!

************ Meanwhile we had a sing at Langdon Place. 18 people showed up! It was held in the memory care unit and was very moving. One of the best things we do!