Close Call!

Brenna holding her mini flashlight to help Mommy see to clean the side of the oven while it was pulled out.

We managed to NOT have a house fire today! 

My older boys were at their cousins house playing today and Devon was in her room catching up on homework. I put a movie on for the 3 youngest kids and went outside to feed and water the animals. When I came back in the house after about 20 minutes, I noticed a burning smell. It smelled like burning plastic. I quickly checked the stove to make sure all the burners had been turned off after lunch and that no kids had played with it while I was out. The kids were all still in the same places they had been in when I went outside, but the stove lights were all off. Everything else looked fine, all the burners were off, nothing was over any of them. I checked the dishwasher which has been out of service for a while now to make sure no one had played with it, but it was still off. I checked the fuse box and two of the breakers had tripped. I tried to reset them, but they wouldn't stay. I unplugged the stove since that was where the smell was coming from and the fuses still wouldn't stay on. So, I did what every good wife would do and called my husband and begged him to come home and take care of the problem.

Rod came home and disconnected the dishwasher completely hoping that was the problem since we already knew the dishwasher was broken. That seemed to work, the stove came back on and I quickly heated up a simple dinner of Taco Soup. We have a gas stove, so once it is lit, it doesn't need power any more which was a good thing because the breaker tripped again and we smelled burning plastic again. We left the breaker off and as soon as dinner was cooked, Rod pulled the stove out of it's spot. We didn't see anything wrong behind it and nothing seemed wrong with it's outlet. So, then Rod pulled out the dishwasher and cut into the sheetrock behind it. Want to see what he found?

That's right! Burned up wires, smoking insulation, and charred wood. Thankfully we caught it in time! And, since my husband is an electrician, he had almost all of the materials on hand to fix (and improve) the wiring. We need a couple more parts to finish it properly.

I could just see having to make an insurance claim for a fire when we are still in the middle of our title dispute, too. "So, you've been in the middle of a title claim for a year and a half and your house just happened to burn down. You really expect us to believe that?" Yeah, I can just see how that would go.
 Right now, we are just very thankful that things worked out well and everyone is safe! Although I must admit to being a little worried about the wiring in the rest of the house now. This particular circuit is the only one that has given us and problems before though.