Great Balls of Fire

The other day I had just put a cake in the oven when I heard what sounded like the garbage disposal chewing up something that didn't want to be chewed.  

But it was coming from the oven.  

I opened the oven and found a bright white, sparking (hence the noise) ball of fire moving slowly around the bottom baking element.  I turned off the oven and ran for my camera.

By the time I took a picture it had moved several inches and turned a warm red color.  A few seconds later it went out.  I suspected that meant I wouldn't be able to finish baking my cake, so I ran it over to the neighbor's house.  I was right, because later when I dared to turn the oven on, the bottom element would not work. 

Trying not to despair, I went on Craigslist to try to find a cheap replacement oven, but none of them were very cheap.  Then I thought maybe I could just replace that part.  I wasn't sure, because the oven is even older than my last dishwasher, but I figured it was worth a try.  I found the model number on the oven and looked it up at the Sear's website.  From there I found the part number I needed.  If I'd bought it from them it would have cost over $40, but I typed the part number into a Google search and got my part for $29 shipped.

Steven helped me remove the old coil and we found out that it had melted!

Replacing it with the new one wasn't as easy as plugging in a burner on the stove top, but it wasn't too hard, either.  It made me feel all empowered and handy to fix it.

It's so nice to have an oven again!