Dear oven, RIP. 

Our much loved oven gave us 10 years, 10 years of family cooked meals, thousands of cooked meals (good and bad). But, its' not been smooth sailing, we've certainly had some ups and downs over the 10 years; the good and the bad, we've been through a lot!

The first time the oven broke down, it was easily fixed. It was the heating element, I watched the engineer fix it, and I remember thinking to myself, wow that was simple, I'll change it myself in future if the oven breaks down again.

Then a year later..

This, I fear, was my fault. I nearly burnt the kitchen down. I've never felt so out of control and scared in my life. How quickly the flames grew, how quickly it got out of control and how lucky I was to have a fire blanket in the cupboard.  

The engineer replaced the front of the damaged oven, the glass etc. and it we continued to use it with no issues.

Another year on...

The oven broke down on Christmas day! Of all the days to break down.. pfft.  We put the Turkey in before we left for our Christmas Day walk and thought nothing of it, our turkey would be 3/4 ready when we got home and I would just add the potatoes etc. But, when we arrived home after our walk, the first thing hubby went to do was to baste the Turkey, but then he called out to me "the oven is cold"; after a quick frantic 10-minutes of trying to get the oven to work, we quickly realized the oven was broken! Of all the days to conk out!  

After seeing how simple the enigneer fixed my oven beforehand and I was pretty confident it was the heating element again, I decided to buy the part for a few quid and fix it myself.

It worked well for a further 12 months....

But, then it broke again and I've finally realised my oven has used up all its lives, and so, we made the decision to get a new oven.

We ordered a new oven, and excitedly waited for it.

Unfortunately the new oven came with it's own issues. Firstly, the delivery company didn't bother to tell us they couldn't deliver as planned for, when I rang to ask where it was, then they apologised and booked me in the following day.

The new oven arrived. It didn't work. It tripped out the power as soon as we switched it on. I rang the company, they rudely dealt with me and made it very clear it is probably a fault on our side and that they will charge us if they come out and find it was "are you sure you want us to come out", uhh yes, I have no oven. I was slightly nervous, but hubby was confident it was the oven.  They booked us in the following week, we waited, lived on the slow cooker and hob (which is so much harder than you would think) cooking.  Got a call in the morning, "sorry the engineer is ill" it will be next week now. urgh, 2-weeks without an oven is not a positive experience.  

Fast forward another week, 2 weeks after we removed our old oven, and tried to get the new one installed, the engineer finally arrived. Within minutes he confirmed it was a fault with the oven! Ha! up yours customer service guy on the phone that was really rather rude to me.  Within half an hour our new oven was fixed and ready to join the family. 

We finally have a brand new (and working) oven. One I hope will last years to come.