Oh the things I get him to do!

So, right before Christmas--in fact, the day Sandy and family were coming in town--don't know what I was thinking--I wanted to clean between the glass of my oven. I can be fanatical like that sometimes.

I enlisted Butch's help, telling him that I pulled the information off the internet and that it looked pretty easy, but would take two people. Famous last words!

Basically, you were supposed to just unscrew two screws. It started to go downhill from there! When Butch did that, it's a good thing I was standing there. That bottom part just fell! If we were smart, we would have stopped right there and put it back together. But little did I know that we had to keep going to get to the glass I wanted to clean.

That aluminum foil you see is really just regular foil--not even heavy duty. As I started to clean this glass, my cleaning rag caught and tore it! What?? Yee gads! (Wow, I don't think I've ever actually said "yee gads" in my life.) So I slowed down and was much more careful. Now here's the thing. This wasn't even the part of the glass I was trying to get to.

It's kind of hard to tell, but I was trying to get to that brown stuff. I don't know how it even got inside there. So now it was on to the next level. More unscrewing.

This is what came next. We carefully removed the inner part of the door.

Butch carefully moved it to the counter. That is just plain, loose cotton. 

Next, this gasket came off. There looked to have been some tape that was holding it in place. There was no sticky left to it. Now he was in a quandary as to how we were going to get that back in--while trying to hold it in the proper place. Impossible for sure. 

About that time, Mindy stopped by to pick up her car. Butch stopped for a minute to go out and show her something. In the meantime, I removed that piece of glass, carefully and took it over to the sink to wash it. 

When I turned around, I stumbled over Mindy's purse! Who the heck leaves it on the floor right where we're working! Luckily, I didn't fall or worse yet, break that glass! On a side note, this piece of glass wasn't the part I was trying to get to either. There were two more below it. Of course it was the very last one that was the cruddiest. I got it! It's probably not as perfect as I would have liked it, but now we were just worried about getting the whole thing put back together. It took both of us. At one point, Butch said, "What did you do with that little plastic thing?" I said, "I never had that, you did!" We started looking all over and finally found it on the floor. Same with one of the screws. It was really tricky to get it back together. 

Lining it all back up was really hard. Plus, the gasket kept falling. Butch managed to find some aluminum tape that looked very much like what was on there. I guess I better quite complaining about all the crap he has kept all these years. Finally something has come in handy!

Trying to find the holes was tricky as the cotton moved and covered a couple of them. All in all, it' took about an hour and a half. Butch kept his cool. We were both surprised that considering it's a Bosch the insides seemed pretty cheap. Plus, who knew there were actually 4 pieces of glass in an oven door? We definitely learned a lot. We learned that we're never doing this again!

Now that it's all back together, I'm so happy at how clean it looks! I couldn't get a very good picture because of the reflection! But trust me, it's clean! At least for awhile. And we're definitely never doing it again! 

I love that this guy is always willing to go along with my hair-brained schemes! (Another term I don't think I've ever used in my life---what does it even mean? It seems perfectly appropriate). 

Have you done anything crazy this holiday season? It's certainly been a crazy enough year for it!