This weekend I had to make a trip to the Northside to check on my parent’s rental property. The previous tenants had to move out, so I basically had to get it ready to put on the market again. My friend, Pastor Micheal Mathews owns a cleaning company, so we used them to do the clean up work and they did an amazing job! Mike always goes above and beyond! There were some other things that needed to get knocked out, one of which being changing out the microwave. Initially I just wanted to replace the door handle of the microwave because that was the only thing that was broken. It turns out it was harder to find a replacement part to make the fix. Rather than wasting time trying to find a replacement door handle for an early 90’s microwave, I decided to swap the whole thing out. Here’s a shot after I already started disassembling.
Taking out the old microwave was a matter of going into to upper cabinets and unscrewing 2 screws. From there, it leaned forward (so position yourself to support it). Then it was a matter of un-mounting it from the metal bracket. So essentially, your microwave is held up by a metal clip in the back and 2 screws in the front. Quick note: The old microwave was super heavy compared to the new one! Here’s a shot of the old mounting bracket found behind the microwave.
After taking off the old mounting bracket, I had to identify the studs behind the wall. You’ll note from the picture below that there was a good amount of grease build-up from the years… so dealing with the old microwave was very sticky/messy.
After identifying the studs, I taped up a template that came with the new microwave. This allowed me to drill the new holes in the appropriate places.
With a combination of stud screws and drywall screws, I mounted the new bracket. Make sure you find studs to give you the support your microwave needs.
I checked for level before screwing it all in tightly…. close enough!
Next step was to drill the new holes in the upper cabinets for the new mounting screws. There was a template for that as well.
After all that prep work, it was a matter of lifting the back of the microwave to the metal mounting bracket, then leaning it back to line up the upper mounting holes and screwing in the mounting screws.
Turns out that the template didn’t line up they way it was supposed to, so I was doing a bit of “exploratory” drilling while holding up the new microwave. Not a fun thing to do, but luckily it all worked out.
Here’s a shot of the finished work:
If you plan on doing something like this yourself, I would HIGHLY recommend having someone assist you. I was able to do it myself, but it would have been 10x easier with someone to hold up the microwave while the final screws were put in place. Imagine me on a ladder with one leg on the stove top (with cardboard over it) holding up the microwave with my knee. Not very fun. Other than that, it was pretty straight forward.
While I was up on the Northside, my Dad mentioned that if there were any fruits on one of our fruit trees to bring some back. I brought my tree trimming blade with me for that reason.
There were a ton on the tree, but I was only able to get what I could reach, which was still a lot. I filled up 3 large trash bags!
Its sorta like grapefruit. They’re massive. Like the size of a mini basketball.
I was pretty tired from all that, but Layla wanted to hang out with Ava (Pokie and Julie’s daughter), so we went over for a bit to just kick it.
Sunday after church Earl, Asha and Maya came over to hang out for a bit. Layla and Maya had a good time playing while Sheena and I had a good time chatting with Earl and Asha.
Immediately after that, we headed out to a birthday party. Layla’s best friend from school, Aubrey, has a lil brother that was turning 1! They had a mini ball pit that the girls really enjoyed.
Ezra got in on the fun as well
It was a milk and cookies party. They had a bunch of different types of cookies and variations of milk too! The smell of cookies in the air was killing me! But i resisted…
Here are the girls again in the ball pit.
Here’s a shot of the birthday boy, Aaron, with his smash cake. Sorry for the blurry pic!
We kicked it at the party for a while. Aubrey’s parents are pretty cool, so we had a good time as well. Once we got home, it was the usual “prep for the week” kinda Sunday evening. Sheena cooked, we had a laundry folding party, and then got ready for bed.
Sajan Abraham 