It was Marji. She figured I was already up. But they knew I might need help installing the new toaster oven. So they offered to come up after Danny ran an errand or three. And, sure enough, they arrived around noonish. Marji sat in the living room, talking to Miles and Winston while coloring her cards. Danny and I went over where the process was and devised what still needed to be done.
We taped the template to the underside of the cabinet and he drilled the four, new holes. Now the trial and error began. The unit came with three sets of screws. They ranged from shirt to medium to longer. But their longest screws were not going to have enough of the end in the screw into the shield safely hold the weight of the toaster oven. So we needed to use the even longer screws from the old unit. I had saved them, just in case. But they seemed to be too long. But we tried them only to have problems securing the toaster oven to the shield. He added spacers, but in each case, they were just a shade too long and were damaging the finish of the toaster oven.
There were a couple of options. Go to Home Depot and try to find a similar screw that was bwtween the longest new one and the longer old one. We could use those loner screws and get a cutting wheel for my Dremel tool and cut them off. Both would have required a trip to home depot. The final option was to add a space inside the cabinet which would make it difficult to lay things flat in the cabinet. I use it for cake pans and other items that would be able to accommodate the screw and spacer standing up in the space, so that is what we opted to do. Danny, very carefully, took the screws out of their mounts, one at a time, and added the extra spacer on the top side and there was still enough screw into the shield to be safe but the toaster oven snapped into the shield and was held there securely. Plugged it in and... voila... it was finished.
I truly do not know what I would do without these two people in my life. While I am positive I could have gotten it myself, I would probably be writing something totally different and finishing the installation tomorrow. (I would have gone to Home Depot and gotten the cutting wheel, probably,) But they have been there helping me. I always try to do things myself and I think they appreciate that. But they are also there for me when I ask or when they just think I could use a hand.
As they were leaving, Marji asked if I would let them have a tomato. I handed Danny a small box from Amazon that I had forgotten to put in the trash so he could fill it with tomatoes from my garden. I have way more than I will ever use. He filled the box and later in the afternoon, I took my large bowl and filled it, too. And there are twice as many that are near ripening and green ones waiting in the wings.
Here is the toaster oven in it's new home. It matched the stove but is smaller than the old one. Still toasts four pieces of Italian bread which is what I usually do. Doesn't it look beautiful?
So my job was now, to put the kitchen back together. I began getting the tools back in their cases and stacking them at the top of the steps to go back down to the work bench. I did stop and made some peanut butter toast to test the toaster oven. Then I put bacon in the oven, cut up one of my newly picked tomatoes and toasted my bread to have the most heavenly BLTs I have had in a long, long time. Crunchy, perfectly toasted bread... on both sides of the slice... made them perfect.
This morning, waiting for Marji and Danny to arrive, I did some vacuuming. I wanted to get up as much of the Miles hair as I could. To do that, I had to gather up all of the dog's toys. There is a small, blue dog bed that Miles has used from time to time... but he is really a tad big for it... and I use it to pile up all of their toys when I want to clean. The entire time that Marji and Danny were here, the toys remained untouched. And even for quite a bit of time after they left, the toys remained in a pile in the bed.
When I had my sandwiches, the dogs sat and watched me from the floor. As I finished, Winston headed over to the toy pile and with just a few tugs, he had dumped ALL of them out on the floor and carried the bed to the other side of the room. It is almost as bed as having toddlers who just grab the toy box and dump it. I would be angry, but my dogs really do love playing with their toys.
Here is what the floor looks like.....
So, it was a really nice day!!! More cleaning tomorrow.
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