This tale begins nearly 10 years ago, because we’ve had a mild level of frustration with the door handles of our ovens from day 1. The ovens are a built-in over/under wall unit.

So, it wasn’t a great surprise when both door handles completely fell off this past weekend. We have a special savings account that we regularly set aside money in just for appliance repair or replacement.  Since we now believed it may be time to replace the ovens, we started checking prices, and were shocked to discover that even the least expensive ovens would cost nearly $2k.

It was time to consider a plan B.  A while back we had an appliance repairman replace a heating element in one oven, so we called him to ask if he thought the handles could be repaired.  He came over, looked at the problem, and said it would depend on being able to find the right replacement screws.  Ironically, the screws we’d always used had never been the right ones.

The next day he returned, and after an hour of labor our oven door handles were firmly attached.  And that bill of $2k to replace the ovens?  Well – the entire repair cost us $75.