Last night, just as dinner was almost done cooking, we heard a loud bang. So loud, in fact, that it was heard upstairs by the children, even over the noise of them playing. And following the bang, we realized that the oven was dead. The electronics were gone, the stovetop wouldn’t turn on, nothing. Checked the fuse box, just to be safe, but no, that wasn’t the problem. Now, whether the storm we were having around that time had anything to do with the untimely demise of our stove, I don’t know. It seems like a reasonable explanation, though, and is more palatable than thinking that our five-and-half-year-old stove just up and died for no reason!

Once the shock wore off, the shopping began. Or the pre-shopping, anyway. We didn’t want to take a chance and go out last night, as there were still severe storms in the area, so we started by checking out websites, (how did people go appliance shopping before the internet?). Best Buy, Sears, Lowe’s, Home Depot–those were the stores we were interested in. We considered double ovens and convection ovens, but in the end, decided that sticking with a standard, single, conventional oven would be best.

Then we looked at brands. At Sears, brand choice is obvious–Kenmore. But we’ve heard good things about LG, so we looked at those, too. And our existing appliances are all Whirlpool, so we had to check those out. Throw in GE for good measure, and we had it narrowed down a bit further. We checked out reviews on the store and brand websites, plus Consumer Reports, to make sure we weren’t looking at any lemons.

Then there were other considerations, most importantly being, who had the best prices? And that was closely followed by who had the best financing? And there were cosmetic concerns, as well. Should we stick with black, as that’s the color of our other kitchen appliances, or branch out, and get stainless? And what about delivery? Some models would take as long as three weeks to get, and that clearly wouldn’t work…sometime in the next few days was a must!

Last night, I had it narrowed down to two Kenmores at Sears, and a GE, available at both Sears and Best Buy. And when I say last night, I really mean at about four in the morning, because when you’re up with a baby, and then can’t go back to sleep, you can get a lot of appliance shopping done. This is a good and bad thing, however, as the later it got, the more the details became fuzzy. But I left the tabs with my top choices open on the computer, so I could go over them once more in the morning.

Then, after church, my careful plans started to fall apart a bit. The sales prices that I was looking at on Sears website yesterday weren’t as good today. And the financing wasn’t as appealing, either. Back to the drawing board.

I decided to check out our one GE choice out on Best Buy’s website. Progress! It was on sale. But, it was a double oven, and we had decided, based on the reviews, that it might not work with our existing outlet in the kitchen. So, I tried to find that oven’s equivalent in a single oven, because I really liked the way it looked. Success again! On, sale, good financing, decent delivery date.

Off to the store we went. Of course, they didn’t have a floor model of the oven, and I really wanted to look at it, to make sure I really liked it, before we committed to it. Fortunately, Sears is right across the street, so we went over there, just to check it out. They did have it, and I did like, but it still wasn’t on sale there, so we went back to Best Buy, and placed our order.

In the end, it worked out really well. Free delivery, free haul-away of the old oven. 18 months of financing, not that we needed quite that long, but it’s nice to have a cushion. We even saved an extra 5% for using our Best Buy card, and that’s on top of the sale price! It’s stainless steel, which makes me feel like our kitchen is a little fancier. I can’t wait until it’s delivered on Thursday!

I have to say, I don’t particularly care for appliance shopping. In a lot of ways, it was worse than car shopping, probably because there are just so many more options from which to choose. I definitely felt like a grown-up though, choosing the stove I’ll be cooking on for (hopefully) many years to come!