New skills!

At my day job, we've been talking a lot about growth mindset, the idea that our abilities and skills are not fixed but can be developed through hard work and dedication. I'm trying to apply that to my slumlord life too.

For example, I have no idea how to fix a gas oven. A gas oven makes me think about explosions. Or Sylvia Plath. And neither of those are positive associations.

But the oven at the new house wasn't baking. The stove worked, the broiler worked, but the bake function didn't do anything. A cursory internet search told me that it was probably the ignitor, and that it would take about half an hour to fix it.

This will not be the first time I curse the internet and its unwarranted optimism about time frames. It took me half an hour to remove one stupid screw. You know what happens to screws on the inside of gas ovens? They get really hot. And also rusty. And when they're mangled and rusty and stripped, they're the WORST! And if it weren't the screw holding the worn out ignitor, I'd have left it there.

Left: new ignitor. Right: the worst!

And then I tried to find the access panel to get to the wiring. The internet told me I'd have to remove a handful of screws from the back of the oven. Which I did. And then I took out some more. And some more. And I kept on finding more and more ways that the back panel of the oven was attached.

Next step: try to get access from inside the oven. I was less persistent now, because all the screws I was trying to remove were rusted, stripped, or both. And the oven drawer refused to come off too. Enough, I said. I can't take it anymore!

Amazing what a good night's sleep and some more googling will do for a lady. Turns out the oven drawer had two super secret hidden levers I had to push in specific directions. And the place I needed access to was at the back of the drawer.

So I got all up in that oven, did some minor re-wiring, and bam! Side note: I don't know how anyone bigger or less limber than I am would be able to do this. I was doing some serious contorting to reach the back of this oven.

 Fire! I tried it out before reassembling the oven floor. But then I let it run too long because I was throwing myself a tiny party in my head, so I had to wait about 15 minutes for it to cool down.