More Homeowneriness... or Homeorneriness?

It was a good weekend. I got the rest of the cabinets primed (inside), I got a few things planted in the backyard, I got the grill out for the first time since I moved, I even touched up all those little spots in the bedrooms where the paint didn't go on quite right... but most importantly...

I CLEANED THE OVEN

This might not sound too exciting. Usually it's not. I would even go so far as to say that under normal circumstances I would HOPE that cleaning an oven would be, in fact, quite dull. But the oven was so filthy with that golden-brown-baked-grease-colored stuff that when the oven light was on, literally no light came through the window. I wish I had a "before" picture to show you. It was... bad. I decided last night to go at it with some steel wool. After a combined 5 minutes of scrubbing and 50 minutes of letting it sit with a damp towel over it, about 2/3 of the ickiness had come off. It really wasn't much effort, which made me a bit annoyed that the previous owners hadn't bothered to do even that much before they sold the place. But hey, it looked a lot better. Then I looked at the auto-clean instructions on the oven. Really looked. Read, you might even say. I've never had a self cleaning oven before, so I hadn't paid much attention to that feature, but... you push a button and slide a handle to lock the door... you set the timer... you turn the knobs to "clean" mode... heck, even I can do that!

So I did. With some advice from people who have had such an oven, I left the auto-clean cycle on for about 4 hours (or, as Jake put it, until the house smelled really bad). It got pretty darn warm in the kitchen (next time I will do this in the winter) but nothing caught fire. That's a good sign. I turned it off right before I went to bed, and when I got up this morning, I opened the oven door and saw this...Ok, there was a bit of white residue on the door, but I swiped it with a regular sponge and it was gone. This is when I started wishing I'd taken a before picture, but it hadn't occurred to me that I would end up with an after that justified a comparison photo. See that black bit on the top of the oven frame? It's outside the seal, so it didn't get auto-cleaned. That is what the entire window and most of the door looked like. That color, and that solid. Now I'm even more annoyed: the previous owners had this kind of magic in their grasp, and they couldn't be bothered to run it... ever, apparently. Not even once, right before they put the house on the market?

Well. I had a great time doing it, and I think I shall make this an annual event. In the winter, though, on a day when I'd be running the heater anyway.