Weekends are supposed to be a time to kick back and relax. Unfortunately, my oven - which regular readers will notice features with alarming frequency in this column - had other ideas, writes Sheena Grant.

It’s not so long ago that I paid £80 to get a blown heating element repaired and even more recently it was out of action again when the door exploded, showering the kitchen with fragments of glass.

On that occasion, I went ‘ovenless’ for several weeks until I bought a replacement door from an online spares shop and fixed it myself.

I had hoped the oven would behave for a while, especially as I had resolved to use it less frequently since saving £10 in electricity charges during the month I was without it. But no...

Soon after I turned it on to cook a pizza two weekends ago the lights, TV and oven all stopped working.

After resetting the fuse box trip-switch they all came back on apart from - you’ve guessed it - that pesky oven. The heating element had blown. Again.

I refused to spend another £80 so we endured another ovenless week before I revisited the online spares shop. Could I fix it myself?

The website inspired confidence. As well as finding the correct part when I keyed in my oven model number, the site I used had a series of videos to guide me through the repair process. My new element cost £27.

I’m not going to pretend my DIY fix was easy. That’s where the previously mentioned lost weekend (or at least a Saturday morning) comes in.

I’d seen last year’s £80 repair man wrestle the oven from the kitchen unit and take the back off to the get to the old element, so I sort of knew what was in store. Only it was more tricky than I had envisaged.

We resorted to balancing the oven on an upturned cardboard box to remove two back plates and wrestle with associated electrical cabling before the old element was revealed.

Three hours (and several tea breaks) later, my husband and I completed the repair.

A few expletives were muttered (on his part) and I held my breath for the big switch-on.

Would it work? Would it explode? I needn’t have worried. Of course it works, for now....

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