The worst way to plumb an icemaker?

We were told by the previous owner that the icemaker in the fridge didn't work because there wasn't any plumbing running to it. When the refrigerator was replaced, we found that there was, in fact, a copper line running to the icemaker, but it was crushed, as the refrigerator had rolled over it. I asked A. to buy a new line for it, which turned out to be about 8" too short. When I was able to extend the line, I found that the pipe it connected to was warm to the touch - not something that you want with an icemaker, but one that caused my parents trouble with their icemaker for years.

I looked at the pipe, but it wasn't connected obviously to the hot water heater, so I set this problem aside to deal with another day, after I'd had time to think about it. This time, the line was hot to the touch. I traced the pipe to the extent that I was able to - and found that it ran into the boiler! Eeew.

About the Intro

In my introduction I state that this house will be "less of the "how are we going to make dinner without a functioning kitchen" type of place. Unfortunately, this is not quite the case.

As I have mentioned previously, the c. 1950 Crown gas stove that came with the house was pretty much DOA. As such, my amazing wife has been preparing meals using a single electric burner, a microwave, and a toaster oven. She's been doing an impressive job of it, too.

We've been making very slow progress on this front, primarily because none of the options are especially attractive. We haven't had much luck finding a replacement stove on Craigslist or eBay - the closest decent contenders have been in Chicago, Illinois, 350 miles away. The cheapest new 40" gas stove is $1600. Putting a narrower stove between the two cabinets would probably be ugly. And while there's a certain novelty to installing two 20 inch apartment stoves, that doesn't seem quite right either.

So we're waiting and hemming and hawing. If you have a 40" white (or even some other color - just not stainless) gas stove that is in good operating condition, and hasn't been sitting in your basement for the past three decades, I may be interested, if you're within 300 miles of us. Of course, we're probably just going to wait some more, as my wife bakes Christmas cookies two at a time in the toaster oven.

In other news, last night I tried to hook up the water line for our new refrigerator. A. had, at my request, purchased a 10' icemaker hook up kit. I pulled out the old copper line, which had been crushed, and enlarged the hole. I hooked the hose up to the refrigerator, and, with a great deal of difficulty, used the old copper line to thread it through the floor. I threaded it under the existing pipes in the basement (note: proximity to the hot water line may be an issue) and came up short. My hope was that the location of the refrigerator was the issue, so I pushed it back into place. Nope - still about 8" short.

I hoped that I'd be able to buy a new line, just a bit longer, with all the fittings at the store today, but alas, they are not avaiable longer than 10'. I guess it's just a matter of waiting for it to do the plumbing work itself.

A beautiful new refrigerator

This morning, at the exceptionally early hour of 8:15, we recieved our new LG bottom drawer refrigerator, a Christmas present from my dad and stepmother. It is a bottom drawer model, in white - not the stainless steel that seems to be all the rage these days. We take great pride in our excellent color choice, bucking the trend from the dark monotony of stainless steel.

We had expected a phone call from Sears to inform us of the delivery time, but evidently, they had not heard the phone number correctly. This made for an interesting series of events when A. informed me, while I was in the shower, that the appliance delivery people were here.

They determined that the refrigerator would not fit through the path I had hoped would work. This necessitated the removal of the swinging door between the kitchen and dining room. I dinged the dining room door frame a bit with the door in my efforts to get it out of the way. Ugh.

Much to our surprise, when the old refrigerator was removed, there was a water line underneath it, albeit one that was crushed to such an extent that water would not flow through it. This was a surprise because the previous owner had told us that the reason why the icemaker didn't work was becuase there was no water line running to it. Surely it will be easier to repair this existing line than it will be to run a new line.

Additionally, we were pleasantly surprised to learn that the area underneath the refrigerator is tiled, unlike the area under the stove. This will provide us with a source for matching tile, should we ever choose to fix the cracked floor tiles.