Wednesday, February 23, 2005

It's Only Money

A few months ago Debby announced that it was time for me to start researching new dishwashers. Ok, no problem, grabbed the Consumer Reports buying guide and totally ignored it. Sunday she said lets go to Sears and look at dishwashers as they are having a President's Day sale. So we dragged the kids on a rainy afternoon and found a very helpful salesman and bought close to the top of the line Kitchen Aid model that was on floor sample closeout. The one minor detail was that the new unit is white and our appliances are black. Debby said she didn't care as she wanted to get a new range at some point anyway. After a brief pause, I figured what the hell, part of the sale includes zero interest financing through Sears for one year and what better way to bank some spousal brownie points then get all new appliances in one fell swoop. Our current range is a double oven with a stove top in the middle. It came with the house and has been perfectly fine for the last 7 years except that baking is a challenge in the top oven as the bottom of everything burns and the tops remain undercooked. So I knew it was time. Again helpful salesman directed us to a new self-cleaning range (that was delivered today) and a combination microwave oven and baking oven to go above the new range. Our current microwave is a hand me down from my uncle and the kids hate it enough to have given us a coupon at Christmas to replace it with a new one. I wanted the combo oven because when Debby bakes for the holidays she usually has both top and bottom going and I surely did not want to downgrade functionality. So an hour and a couple of thousand dollars later we had all new white appliances. The dishwasher and microwave combo are being installed on Friday. It's pretty exciting since I have never purchased these items before and a bit spontaneous as I did only 5 minutes of dishwasher research and absolutely none for the oven and range. But Debby is happy and that is the most important thing to me. Now, if I can get the kids to pay for the $850.00 microwave combo.