A story of appliances to fill the time that a house takes to build...

(Be warned, the story is longer than its title!)

The frame is finished and the bricks have arrived. Down the road Solid are building someone else's house too and I watch it nearly as closely as I do mine. I tried not to feel jealous  when their bricks arrived before mine! It didn't really work :)

It is raining this weekend and I like rainy days a lot, but the more often the sun shines on a weekday, the quicker the house will be built.

In the meantime, a story of ovens and cooktops!

My contract with Solid includes builder's range cooking appliances. In the three houses I have owned, I have had two lots of builder's range. Both time Chef. I am not impressed. This time the builder's range wasn't even to Chef level. It wasn't a deal breaker but it was something that left me keeping an eye open to options.

I have been watching Masterchef and they have been using Ariston ovens etc. They reminded me of the Eurolec stove that I had in house no.2. I loved that stove. The oven was enormous and the cook top large and delivered really good heat. The gas oven wasn't fabulous as the heat was uneven, but the size made up for it. So I started nosing round on the net, looking at stoves, ovens and cooktops. I was reading reviews and getting a feel for things. I have to say, this is the best thing to do before you need an item. Know what you might like in advance so that you can leap if it falls under your feet by chance.

And chance arrived. I listen to 666 radio and sometimes the stupidity of the callers to the program makes me so mad I resort to the commercial channel. So on my way to work I heard an add saying that Clive Anthony was closing down and clearing all stock.

It was a call to action. First off I went to Harvey Norman. I asked about the items I had chosen on line, best price. I was by then looking at De Longi which seems to get reasonable reviews at a moderate price. Armed with local prices and their opinion, I headed to Clive.

Well the place looked ransacked. The shelves bare. I headed down to the cooking appliances area and there were still some options available. The De Longi appliances were of a mixed bag. One of the ones I had ticked in my mind was at an absolutely excellent price, but no oven in that brand that I wanted. So I started looking at other brands for an oven. I ended up standing in front of Bosch. I started to get serious. It seemed that the prices were possible. Then I went hunting for a cook top. Bingo. Not on display, but wrapped in plastic, I found a cook top from Bosch. Waited for staff. Got a price. Tingled with excitement.  I wanted to double check the Bosch reviews for these particular items and I wanted to see if Harvey Norman could make an offer in the same ball park as I would rather be dealing with an ongoing business and they  had given me a very good price on my dishwasher.

HBA43B450A

The girl at Harvey was very helpful and she told me that the price I was being offered for the Bosch was less than cost. The reviews were good so I rang to pay a deposit. The fellow I speaking to said that the cook top I wanted was not there and I would have to pay $100 more for the next model. Well, I was disappointed but it wasn't the end of the world. I agreed and paid the deposit and the items were put aside for me.

Next day when I went to pay the remainder and collect, I noticed that the one I had originally seen was still there. I asked if I could go back to my original plan and they agreed cheerfully. (I was impressed with the service I was getting when the staff were obviously working so hard under difficult conditions)

 

Bosch PCH615FAULP

 In the loading dock, they brought out the wrong one. The up market one was being delivered to me. I brought it to the fellows attention. He left me for a while, scoured the store and couldn't find the one I had bought. Someone had picked it up! So he adjusted my paperwork and I ended up with the upmarket version for the lesser price. I saved thousands in the transaction all up.

So now I have an oven and cooktop that by review, is much better than anything I have ever owned before. It's exciting!