It's Getting Worse

So this electricity thing. Of course the house would start falling apart right after a big, elective upgrade. Here's what's happened so far--

• A day or two into the new patio build, the landscaping company accidentally cut a wire to our house. We had it checked out and were told it was just an old copper phone line, so we dismissed everything that followed as unrelated.
• About three weeks ago, a couple days after the phone line was cut, we started noticing that the lights beginning to flicker pretty dramatically.
• After about a week of making sure we weren't crazy or needed our eyes checked, we tentatively linked the flickering to using the microwave, but we still weren't certain. The office was affected, with the computer plugged into a powerstrip attached to one of the sockets being forcibly shut down. No circuits in the basement were tripping but a GFCI was. 
• Then the same thing happened, but the light didn't start working again when we reset the GFCI. That brings us to where we were during my last post about the issue.
• D did some reading and consulting and decided that the microwave was the likely (and also cheapest, though microwaves aren't exactly "cheap" culprit). So we ordered one.
• He also solved the problem with the light in the office with some tinkering that required only minor electrical work and therefore was permissible according to my general sense of things you should and should not attempt with no professional training:
• Apparently, you can test the switch when the electricity is off, to see if it still can conduct power. This switch, apparently, failed the continuity test (see the 1? that means no continuity, even though it was switched on):

• A new switch that we just happened to have in the garage passed the continuity test with those 000s when the switch is in the "on" position.
  

• So D swapped out the switches and suddenly the light worked. Go us! And with a new microwave on the way, we figured we were on our way to solving this.
• Then the microwave arrived. We took a quick peek behind the wall before they put the new one in, just to make sure there wasn't any kind of visible issue there that could have caused the microwave to break. Nope, all good:

• So we have this new microwave (we selected that microwave like we select pretty much everything these days, by seeing what the Wirecutter recommends and buying it, because we're lazy. We decided to final switch from black (to match our oven and dishwasher) to stainless steel (to match our fridge) in the hopes that eventually we will end up with everything being stainless.

• And guess what. The new microwave solved literally nothing. Not only didn't it fix the existing flickers, but they seem like they are getting worse. Now we can consistently predict that the office will short whenever we start the dryer and even sometimes when the heat clicks on.The garbage disposal even significantly dims the lights.

An electrician came out to take a look and he checked the circuit box, tightened some things, and confirmed that all of these things are on separate circuits. Other than that, he had truly no idea what to do. He didn't charge for the visit, at least.

Then today, turning on the dryer even made the living room lights turn off, then on, then off, then on again. This problem seems to be spreading and we have no more leads and an unnecessary microwave (we actually miss our old one, but oh well).

Any ideas? Besides trying a new electrician.

Of course something would break

Of course we'd have a sudden house issue exactly when we're in the midst of an expensive elective upgrade. On Friday, we noticed the under-cabinet lights flickering in the kitchen while we were preparing lunch. Then this week, we started to notice that the flickering seemed to sync up to when we were running the microwave. And the microwave was sounding a little loud.

It seemed pretty ignorable though. Maybe a weird power draw, yes, but ignorable.

Tonight though, the office power went out when we reheated dinner. Uh...ok this has officially escalated to no-longer-ignorable. The microwave seems to be the culprit:

But, I said, our microwave is pretty new! It can't be the microwave! How long is a microwave supposed to last? Well thanks to this blog, I was able to tell pretty quickly how old the microwave was. Seven years old. To the month. To which I thought, "See? That's too new to need replacing."

Google, however, has other ideas:

Touché, Google. 

And given this last year, let's just say that we're using it a whole lot more than we used to, since we're home and preparing food ALL.THE.TIME.

The problem now appears that the light in the office will no longer turn on, even after we reset all the GFCIs that were tripped. We tried replacing the bulbs just in case those were at fault. But no.

So we're left with a conundrum of whether to buy a microwave or hire an electrician. It seems like the internet agrees that our microwave should not be on the same circuit as other normal things like lamps and outlets, so that might require some electrical work. And this light might be completely busted. D suggested taking the fixture off to test if the wires were still working, but that feels like a step too far in the "leave for a professional" direction. We change fixtures, but only when the circuits are off. Deliberately turning them on to test whether the electricity is flowing is where I draw the line. And so it's a chicken and egg problem: do we call the electrician or replace the microwave?

(For better or worse, we made a decision: new microwave arriving on Monday.)
 

Our New Science Oven

Thank you, American Hustle*, for giving me a new name for our fancy new microwave. When our last "science oven" broke, we wasted no time in hunting for a new one. We did continue to use it, opening and shutting the door carefully and trying to not stand too close or directly in front. But obviously that was a very short-term solution. The following weekend, we went out to a local appliance store to see what they had (the same day, actually, that we went to see American Hustle - one has to take advantage of a baby-free day out).

We discovered right away that we did not like the fancy new dial wheel interface. So the trip was worth it just to find that out. We are apparently old fogies that want a good old fashioned number pad (much easier to enter higher numbers in than spin to them, and let's face it - if I wanted to defrost something I would just set it to 5-10 minutes on medium power and not use the fancy auto settings). The problem was that the nicer microwaves had the wheel and so we were stuck with the basic ones without bells and whistles in other areas like fancy enamel interior and powerful vent fan. After consulting with the salesman, we also decided against a convention oven because we have a convection toaster oven and it just didn't seem worth the extra price. We've done just fine without convection for years.It was $200 to deliver and install, otherwise we would have to pick it up at the store when it came in. Not too bad, but we wanted to check our other options.

It was immediately evident that Home Depot had better options. I wanted to support a smaller store but they just could not compete. We ended up choosing a GE one, PVM9195DFBB, that met everything we were looking for - easy-clean enamel interior (an upgrade from our last microwave), number pad, 4 vent fan speeds (we couldn't find how many cubic feet per minute our old microwave vented, unfortunately, so we couldn't use that to compare and just looked for a slightly higher number, 400 cfm on the one we chose vs. 300 cfm on the basic-level model). It was, of course, more money than the one we would have chosen at the local place, but that was because at the local store we would have picked the one without enamel interior, smaller interior space, and less-powerful fan simply to have the number pad.

The icing on the cake - free delivery to the house OR $100 for full install. Yes please.

And so today was the big day and paying for installation was so worth it. Two professional guys who actually knew what they were doing took about 45 minutes from start to finish, so imagine how long it would have taken us. Step one, pull out the old microwave:

It was a trusty appliance that, according to the manufacture date, was installed in 2002 or 2003, so it lived a good long life. A Whirlpool something or other that seemed to have next-to-no online presence.

 Then they removed the mounts:

Unpacked the new microwave and installed the new mounts:

 And then put in the new one:

 Ta-dah! They even set the clock and tested the fan and light.

See the pretty enamel interior? It's supposed to be much easier to clean and scratch-resistant than the standard white interior. And failing that, the darker color will make it harder to see the gunk.

The fan sounds more powerful but the vent intake is smaller, so that isn't great. None of the pictures online had a picture from this angle. But hopefully the (at least seemingly) more powerful fan will compensate.

*American Hustle clip drops an f-bomb or two, just so you know.

A healthy dose of radiation?

OK blog readers, no lurking now - I need help. It seems in my unobservant, post-baby sleep-deprived state, I failed to notice that our microwave was cracking. D mentioned it a few weeks ago as if I couldn't have missed it. And of course after he pointed out a few small cracks, the situation devolved into major disrepair. We are holding on a piece with two kinds of tape...(actually there was only a crack part of the way through, held together with one piece of tape last time I looked - and tonight when I went to start heating something, I noticed that it must have broken more when D used it and now it's pretty much totally broken off...)

Because really, it's a microwave - pretty hard to live without (I did it once while studying abroad - it involved reheating everything by frying it in oil). And so we continue to use it. But is it safe? I can't imagine that plastic is all that is standing between us and the microwave radiation. But somehow I don't want to be in the kitchen when it's on.

On a related note - it looks like the measurements for over-the-stove microwaves are pretty standard and we could just go to Home Depot, Lowes, etc. and buy a new one. Any insights into the installation? Is it doable by us? Keep in mind that "us" involves a little baby now, so we might not be quite as able as we used to be (or at least that at any given point, one of us might have to go deal with baby drama). And yes, I've googled for this - but what I'm looking for is first-hand experience. Have you done it? Was it hard?

Please help!