CCE
(Keyrock the unfrozen caveman lawyer; your world frightens & confuses me)
21
I had one over the stove in the first house we lived in, and replaced it with the same model so I wouldn’t have to replace the wall mount bracket or drill new holes for the cord.
It was a tight fit to the adjacent cabinets and I was having trouble popping the old one off the wall mount. So I got the “genius” idea of laying on my back across the stove and counters to basically sort of do a bench press move to release it.
Voila! Now I’m laying on my back with the microwave on my chest and no where to go with it, and my wife not due home for another 10 minutes… (Insert Homer Simpson “DOH!” sound file).
Edit - oh, hey, I forgot about my longest-lived microwave. It was a hand-me-down before we got married and I think the total lifespan was over 20 years. Not sure how much use it got from the prior owner but I used it a lot. The magnetron started drifting to where it was heating stoneware MUCH more/faster than water and was disintegrating plate rims.
I inherited one of the older Amana RadarRanges. A mechanical dial and three buttons. Worked flawlessly for about 40 years. Still worked when it went in a barn auction.
The outlet for the microwave is on the back wall of the cabinet - right behind the exhaust duct for the range fan. You can’t plug anything in; it’s too tight - without bending the ductwork. I found a very short appliance “extension cord” - about 1 ft long, with a flat head that goes in the wall socket; installers were thankful. I was afraid you were going to say someone turned your stove on while you were doing the bench press. My cat would have done that …
The first home microwave I ever used I bought as a gift for my parents probably 50 years ago. I think it cost most of what I made in my summer job that year. It was all dials & sat on a TV cart. It would probably still be working today if my parents hadn’t remodeled their kitchen and switched to a built-in one (but not over the range).
A fellow student I knew had an secondhand Amana Radar Range in his kitchen. I think the MWO I got my parents was a Panasonic.
Our built in microwave died as well and then an under counter wine cooler. Found an appliance repair guy who came out to look at the wine cooler. The wine cooler was too expensive to repair but he fixed the microwave by replacing a little capacitor. Since it was built in we were thrilled it could be fixed. Trying to find one to fit the space exactly could be difficult. And since we had a duplicate wine cooler that was in the mud room it replaced the other one under the counter.
Interesting that I had a cheap wine cooler that was in our pool house that was way older and was storing some port that has not skipped a beat. It is now full of wine as well
