Thursday, October 6, 2011

Just Nuke It!

I was so excited to share our kitchen makeover that I neglected to share the story of the over-the-range microwave that is now part of our life. It took some time to convince RC that we needed it but eventually he agreed.
When we first moved in the kitchen was still rocking out in all its 80s glory. It had a hood vent above the stove and it worked great but it had not been cleaned once until the day we moved in and I removed years of grease off the front. The hood was white metal and some of it was chipping off from age. At first I thought I would spray paint the hood stainless steel to match the appliances but I was nervous it would look worse than it already did so I just lived with it and secretly hoped I would evetually get an over-the-range microwave.


Then after we updated the countertops and the cabinets the hood vent stuck out like a sore thumb and it had to go. I finally convinced RC that it would clear up some counter space in the kitchen and would look better than the hood. I showed him countless pictures and even some demo kitchens at Home Depot and when he finally said okay I did a happy dance in the Home Depot appliance department and after a few strange looks the guy asked us if he could help us – I excitedly told him which one we wanted. I had already done the measurements and found one that fit our space perfectly and lucky for us it was on sale that day.
One problem was this…we had not removed the existing hood yet and we were pretty sure that there was not a grounded plug in the cabinet. This meant that HD would not install it for us. We had a feeling this was going to happen and were not surprised so we told them to just deliver it and we would install it ourselves.



I watched 5 different people install them on you tube and it didn’t look that hard and I convinced RC that it was easy since I had seen someone else do it (I can be pretty convincing). The nuker was delivered and it sat in our kitchen for a few weeks until we mustered up enough courage to remove the hood vent. RC and his dad removed the old vent and he installed a grounded plug inside the upper cabinet.


Once the plug was in I used the template that was included in the microwave to install the mounting plate and attached it via screws to the bottom of the upper cabinet. That was the fun part…I think we ended up drilling 12 holes before finding where they actually matched up to the proper hole in the microwave. I promise I drilled the holes right where the template told me to. Unfortunately we don’t have any pictures of this process because it took both of us to get this microwave in place – it was a lot harder than it looked on youtube.

Now that it is up I can’t imagine how we ever lived without it and now I have more counter space where our old one used to be. For more details on our kitchen makeover go here.