Last night, the Jacobs (Paul & Biji) arrived from Michigan. We “officially” inaugurated the stove Friday night (unofficially with pasta & meat sauce Thurs night) with t-bone steaks, mashed potatoes, and a vegetable medley. The gas range worked out great. 4 regular/power/simmer burners, and a large 5th burner that can be used with the included griddle. Fun fun fun.

Saturday night, we are heading to a BBQ at Doug & Kathy’s. I hope the weather holds up — there is a severe thunderstorm warning in the area.

Today, the plumbers came to hook up the stove to the gas line in the kitchen.  When I spoke to them yesterday,  they only had an older gentlemen available to come at 1pm who wasn’t very “spry” to move appliances around.  I worked from home today, and made arrangements with my buddy Doug to come down and help me swap the old stove in the kitchen with the new stove sitting in the dining room.  Last night, I went to a Lowe’s store after work to pick up some additional tools (ball-peen hammer, chisels, bulbs, safety glasses, etc.)  Why?  It’s a long story, but the dishwasher was installed crooked, and I was trying to fix it before the stove was installed next to it.

Mid morning, the plumber wants to come earlier, but I hadn’t done any work on the dishwasher, and Doug wasn’t arriving until 11am, so I said no.  All of a sudden, they found younger guys to do the work if I could left them come earlier, so I canceled with Doug.  Two guys showed up, installed the stove, and left.  Total time: about an hour. Their schedule and availability was so inflexible, so I worked from home to get the move done myself.  Today, they made other arrangements.  If I had known this, I would have gone to the office instead.  Ah well, you can’t know everything.

It feels great to know our kitchen is basically complete.  Now we just need Lowe’s to come back and cart off our old stove.  Otherwise, I’m putting out the original stove for bulk trash pickup next week.  I’d hate to do that, since the old stove is working.  We just don’t want it sitting in our dining room for the next 7 years.

The new stove

We’re cookin’ with gas, baby.  We inaugurated the stove by making tri-color rotini with meat sauce for dinner.  Tomorrow night, we’re grilling up t-bone steaks when Paul & Biji come over for dinner!