Home Improvement - Gas Cooktop

We live in the house I grew up in, have been living here for just over two years. When my mother suggested we might want to buy it when they decided to downsize, it did not take much convincing on her part. The house is a generous sized bungalow and sits on a very generously sized lot and in a highly prized neighborhood in Southeast Portland. We could vastly increase the amount of area we devoted to the chickens and garden and still have plenty of room for the girls to play and entertain in our backyard...and we could walk to coffee, food carts, a few local bars, and restaurants. What more does an urban farmer need?

The downside is that this house had not been remodeled since the 1970's.  It comes with a long list of improvements that need to happen as we have funds and/or the time and energy to do the work ourselves.  Luckily, I come from a long line of DIY-ers and am not intimidated taking on most projects--we did build two chicken coops in one year. AND, The Hubs is especially talented at some minor electrical and most plumbing jobs....remember the broken waste pipe last summer?

One of the more complicated things we wanted to improve was replacing the electric cooktop with gas.

Note there are only two burners. There is a griddle, which is fantastic for Saturday morning pancakes, but the two burners is really limiting.

When we moved into our first home here in Portland, we purchased a five burner gas range to replace the derelict one the contractor/house flipper had installed to sell the house.  That five burner range was heaven for cooking and canning and we have missed it since the day we moved in to my family home.

This week, The Super Hubs took on the cooktop project.  We had to run a gas line from our gas water heater eight feet over to where the cooktop is located.  In addition, The Hubs discovered mid install that the old cooktop ran on a 220 circuit, so we had to have a new 120 circuit run from the panel to this location.

In this case of home improvement, we utilized subcontractors to complete the gas line and electrical work and it was money well spent.  The Hubs finished installing the cooktop himself after the electrical was completed.

The new to us cook top was my mom's, she pulled it out of her new house because she doesn't like gas cooking. She replaced it with a electric glass cooktop - some people really love those glass top stoves. (I don't understand either.)

Four burners. Finally. Canning this summer is going to be fantastic.