Do-It-Yourself Story

It took a few of us. One to vacuum up the fire extinguisher residue. One to trip the breaker. One to provide light. One to clean out under the stove while it was pulled out. I disconnected the bake element. I needed help to disconnect one of them because it was very tight. I put the element into the oven and reconnected the right side, very easy. The left side fell back into the slot. Curses ensued. I removed the back plate and it was very easy to thread the left wire back into the oven and reconnect the wire. Oven done. Back plate reattached fairly easily. My son and I removed the screws under the front of the range top. While holding up the range top he removed the screws holding one of the radiant elements. The replacement element was not identical to the original one. It was fairly intuitive and after another child found some needle nose pliers to remove the wiring we were able to hook up the new element and screw it back in place. The second element was replaced in similar fashion. Except during replacement one of the clips that holds the element in place fell down inside the range. After some creative thinking, the clip was recovered and the repair was complete. I used the scraper to remove most of the burnt crunchy bits that had accumulated under the edges of the range top. It was very effective. The last problem was pushing the stove back into place. The power cord got stuck underneath the stove. We needed to repurpose a wooded sword into a hook to hold the cord out of the way until the stove was back in place.