WEEKEND PROJECTS

When you own a house, it comes with a never ending list of projects and tasks to do as i'm finding out :)  Anyway yesterday I completed two projects off the list.  Our counter top microwave burnt out so we had to get a new one.  Sears had a Kenmore over the range style one on sale for half off, so we ordered one and i picked it up on Wednesday.

The stove had a hood over it already so i had to take that down.  The good thing is that since there was a hood, there is power but the bad thing was the power was hard wired to the hood and not a socket.  So I had to run to Home Depot and pick up a female socket plug style (not wall mount style).  I then proceeded to flick breakers in the garage until the power went dead to the hood so i didn't get shocked because that's the type of thing that would happen to me :lol:.  After stripping the wires and putting the plug together, i decided to ask the 2o2p community if the phasing was right before i continued.  Of course i had put it together backwards, again typical for me. 

So the next morning i re-wired the plug so the phasing was correct and proceeded to work with the rear mounting bracket that goes on the wall.  I measured the center line and all that jazz, but when it came to drilling holes, i found out that the 4 corner moutning points didn't line up with studs.  They had provided some anchor bolts or i call them wingnuts which required me drilling 3/4 inch holes in the wall.  Then i probed with a small drill bit to see if any other holes lined up with a stud and one did so i put a screw in that one along the bottom of the mounting plate and secured the plate to the wall.

The upper cabinet was the tricky part.  THey give yo uthis stupid paper template to try and do precision measurements with.  So i follwed the directions and trimmed and taped it onto the underside of the upper cabinets and proceeded to drill the holes for the moutning bolts that come through the top cabinet.  Then it was time to mount this beast to the wall.

Of course i have no help so jobs designed for two are usually solo ventures for me.  Hoisting it in place to get the bottom mounting tabs lined up with the microwave was a challenge but once that was done, i slid some boxes over so the microwave was resting on them leaning slightly forward which allowed me climb up on a chair and see how far off the upper bolt mounting holes were.  Much not to my surprise the holes were off so i ended up on both sides drilling more of a channel hole so the bolt had some positional variation and that worked, i screwed those down and then inspected my work.  That's when i saw that the bottom left corner wasn't on the mounting bracket mount .  So i had to undo the upper bolts so it would lean forward again onto the boxxes.  THen took off the top box so i could take the weight and them try and left the corner so it engaged the mounting tab on the left side without the right side popping out.  Then put the box back and re-did the upper mounting bolts.  What a job.

Then i plugged it into the socket i had installed and..... nothing happened.  I was like oh shit, don't tell me the damn thing is defective.  I knew the socket was good becasue i tested it with a light.  But i pressed a few buttons and it came to life ... whew.

So here we have my new over the range microwave mounted.  (ya the stove is black. It came with the house and works so there's no justification to replace it just because of color but at some point it'll be replaced with a white one to match the rest of our appliances)