We had an oven fire on July 12th. With a 1 day old oven. Let me explain our summer of appliance hell.
Our old oven that came with our condo stopped baking a few weeks before, and when we did the math it seemed like getting a new one was a better value than paying hundreds of dollars for a service call for the old one. So we called a locally owned appliance store with a sterling reputation, and it was delivered and installed expeditiously. Sears should take notes-because by the time July 12th rolled around we had two dishwashers (yeah, the dishwasher had up and died in May) we had bought from them-all backordered, finally delivered, and then they died-either they never worked or died within days. The third one was a charm. Well, it seemed to be by July 12th, anyway.
So, we had our oven for approximately 22 hours when I decided to bake the kids some chicken nuggets for dinner. I preheated the oven to 350 as directed, as I had a million times before. Except this time, it started to smoke as it approached 350 degrees. In fact, smoke started pouring out and my sad, weak ventilation fan did nothing. The smoke smelled toxic. I told the kids to get out of the house. I turned off the oven and called Sean (who worked in the basement) and told him I thought the oven was in fire. He ran up the stairs and told me to get out. The smoke was dense and thick and I grabbed the cat and got out. He had brought out a one way fan and blew the smoke into the back yard, but the damage was done-there was soot all over the house and the smell of burnt plastic and chemicals was nauseating. I made Sean wear my respirator because no one should be breathing that.
When it was all said and done, the culprit of our fire were rubber-handled grilling utensils Sean put in the bottom drawer out of habit. Except in THIS stove, the bottom drawer was a broiler, not a storage drawer. Even though the broiler wasn't on, it got hot enough to ignite our rubber utensils. Sean and I both earned a Darwin Award that day-him for putting the utensils in there in the first place, and me for believing the salesman who told me that we could store stuff in it. I called their customer service department and told them what happened and they said "fire" (and I assume, "stupidity") is not part of the warranty.
Anyway, instead of having Gillian's friend over for dinner, the girls and I spent the night at her friend's house. This is important because it illustrates that no one is an orphan in Rogers Park (and man, do I adore our community of neighbors). I called our insurance company next to see if "stupidity" was a covered benefit, and indeed it was. I was so grateful I nearly wept because our house was a disaster. But I started getting an inkling of what was in store when they told me the professional cleaning and decon team would be at our place at 7:30 the next morning. I was giddy at the idea that not only would our stove be covered to replace, but the whole house would get cleaned! And we could stay in a hotel for the duration of the cleaning-which, amazingly, was four solid days. Booking a nearby hotel proved to be a challenge-there was nothing with a kitchenette or separate bedroom available anywhere...so we got to shack up in one room (the kids did not go to bed before 11 pm any of the nights we were there). But before that, when we arrive at the hotel they told us we didn't have a room (thank God for printed receipts) and after over an hour at the desk, the rate I was given over the phone was not honored, which equals another 30 minutes if irritation. We had no toys, a little food we tried to keep on ice, and not much clothing. Luckily we were near the gym where the kids take swim class, and could go swimming. Also, on Saturday we had arranged to spend the next day at a friends place going to a kids concert and generally hanging out.
At some point the insurance company told us they would cover all the food losses and anything destroyed in the oven. I was to inventory everything in the cabinets. I made a Type A spreadsheet and threw lots of things away. They also decided to cover the microwave, and eventually the refrigerator (both had so much soot in them that it was more expensive to clean them than replace them). They also covered the window units, which had stopped working after getting gunked up. After the cleaning crew came and went, we went home. The house had definitely never been so absolutely spotless. My online claim told me that USAA had paid $8,000 for my house to be spotless. At some point, a professional dry cleaning came and took all our curtains for professional cleaning to get the soot off.
The kids had a doctors appointment on Thursday. We came home to a strong plastic burning smell and I noticed that the faceplate where the industrial air cleaner had been plugged in was melting and turning black. I freaked and we turned off all the breakers and called an electrician. Within a couple of hours someone got our here and took care of it, but told me he didn't think that fix was permanent or safe, and that it was a systemic issue-which he linked to our oven fire "surge" (which I wasn't surge was true or not, but he seemed very interested in making it part of the claim). Generally, our crappy wiring was a fire hazard. The electrician said he thought we should redistribute the electrical because most of the condo was on 3 circuits. Some of the wiring looked like it was 50 years old or more. He said it was a tinder box waiting to go up. USAA said he needed to do work that was to code and in order to bring the condo up to code he was authorized to redistribute the lines, which he estimated would cost $1600. So, a crew of two men who didn't speak English worked on the electrical for two solid days. Then they billed us $6800-which was a LOT more than they estimated. The electrician blew it off and said they ran into more than they bargained for in the walls. USAA didn't sound alarmed. At 6:30 the next morning our neighbor downstairs (who had a 2 day old baby) knocked on our door and told us water was pouring out of his ceiling. I had officially had enough and this was the last straw. Our dishwasher line had become electrified and the holes resulted in an enormous amount of water going into the walls and ceiling below us. Our overpriced electrical job had made things even worse. And to top it off the damned dishwasher had died. For the third time in two months.
So, I called USAA and the electrician in a panic, and they came back out. USAA again told him to fix the issue, which he determined was a grounding problem. They worked two more days and billed us $5,000 more. Our $1600 job turned into a nearly $12,000 job. I was furious. USAA routed our claim to the fraud department and threatened not to pay since the electrician didn't get preauthorization for the work-anything past the $1600. I called the electrician and told him to call USAA or I would put a stop payment on our Visa and he wouldn't get a dime. He called them, they relented, and decided to pay. It was a screaming nightmare. And they left spackled holes all over our house. USAA said they would pay to paint the house, so I went with a really respected painting company. By the time the house got painted, it was September. The haggling, the house being in shambles, the lack of normalcy, the delivery of two refrigerators (yes, one of them didn't work for us either), two more dishwashers (even the one they delivered after the ceiling incident for the neighbors was a dud-that made four dead dishwashers from Sears), the stress of not getting reimbursed for all the work, but finally getting reimbursed, the haggling with contractors who did more damage even while they repaired things (like the wall damage from when they moved appliances to clean the walls), electrical, and painting, and endless negotiation took 11 weeks. And then we got to deal with being stiffed by Sears who had reimbursed us for one dishwasher and charged us for four more. I spent many hours on the phone and finally spoke with the store manager. She had the money back in our account within 24 hours.
So, by mid-September the house was finished. New electrical, new paint, new appliances, clean (only after Sean and I scrubbed everything after the drywall patching and sanding, which unfortunately happened after the professional cleaners came and went). The relief was palpable. And that is the story of our anything-but-simple oven fire.
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