Inducted to Induction

This was something we had talked about since we bought our house. The cooktop that came with the house was already 15 years old. It worked, but you could tell the burners which had the most use were not heating as effectively. We put it off for years because we made it work. It cooked food, and we ate. 

This year due to some changing circumstances, I was cooking more than usual. I was spending a lot more time in the kitchen and it felt like the right time to upgrade our cooktop. Lovely enough, prices had also shot up since Covid began in 2020. The induction cooktop we were looking at originally retailed for around $1,200. Now, it is selling for $2,000. Yup, almost double. As much as we wanted to upgrade, that was just too much money for a cooktop. 

So I went back to the drawing board and did some research. There was a separate brand rated well and we could save about $500 from our original. I put that on the back-burner to think about and life continued as usual. 

One morning, out of curiosity, I started browsing while the kids were still asleep, and I saw that the model I wanted to get was half off! I was so excited. I told my husband and he told me to buy it right then and there. So I did. Well, the excitement was short lived because within hours of placing the order, the store emailed me saying there was going to be a delay and the item would not be available for an extra month. 

Great. At least we weren't replacing a broken appliance, just upgrading. Well, we got two more of these delay notifications and they were telling us it wouldn't be available for pickup until May 19th. That was two months from the date I'd purchased! 😑 Oh well, we were at the mercy of the store. 

As we waited, the excitement died down because life just continued as usual and didn't include a new cooktop yet, and eventually, I kind of forgot it was coming. On April 20th, I got the email. It caught me by surprise, because like I said, I'd kind of forgotten we'd ordered a new cooktop. We went and picked it up a few days later and had it installed this past weekend.

Installing it was supposed to be easy. Undo the wires on the old unit. Lift out. Drop in new unit. Connect wires. Done. It was supposed to be a 20-30 minute job. Ha..ha...jokes on us. It ended up taking 2 hours. After unboxing, we dropped it in and realized that the top was wiggly in one area. Not good. We inspected and looked around and my husband told me one screw wasn't going in tight. Turns out, it wasn't making contact with the bracket to hold the top in place for that spot. So out it came and we did some creative adjustments to make it work. 

Then, we dropped the cooktop back in to the cutout only to realize it was slightly uneven on the sides. This was not good as I did not want my cooktop doing a seesaw motion on the counter. So...once again, I jerry-rigged a fix. Don't worry, nothing was damaged, cut, or broken in doing so. And it sits on the counter absolutely wonderfully now. 

I really like the completely flat design.

After we got everything hooked up, we had to re-insert our drawers. We have four drawers that sit below our cooktop, two skinny ones and two large ones. The large ones went in with no problem, but the skinny one on the right wouldn't push all the way back. Once again, we had a moment of panic because the wire cover on this new cooktop was thicker than the old one so we weren't sure if the drawer would actually fit back properly in the space. Luckily, we moved the wires around underneath and the drawer pushed in normally again.

Perfect skinny drawer for spices.

So that was a lovely afternoon spent installing our new cooktop, a task that took four times as long as it probably should have in a perfect world. If it's one thing we've learned in our seven years of renovating, it's that everything takes longer than you think it will, you always realize you need something as soon as the store closes, and nothing is ever as straightforward as the instruction manual makes it sound.

Next time, my actual thoughts on induction cooking.