I came home from the car show inspired. Upon entering my garage, I noticed that none of my cars had chrome on them. Two didn't come with chrome and the third didn't have chrome on it, "any more". As I made my way into the kitchen for a glass of cold water, I spied it..........my show machine. I decided to pimp out my toaster. Don't laugh, it already has lots of chrome and with a little elbow grease, I think I could make it a real show piece.
I decided to do a complete tear down and rebuild. I pulled off the sides and tore out the crumb catcher, underneath. The original cord was white yet stained a bit from the constant heat as well as some errant coffee spills of days past. I debated with keeping it all original, but.... The stock cord was a standard two prong and I had thoughts of swapping it out with a three prong cord off an old blender but I actually found a two pronged,three foot cord off a fan I had in the back room. The three foot cord would allow me to move the toaster over to the end of the counter so I could make toast and still watch ESPN in the mornings. The springs inside the toaster have lost some of their stiffness over the years. I was able to take the overhead spring off my fron screen door, cut it in half and trim the ends to give my bread a soft ride down and my fresh toast a firm boost at the end. I toyed around with chopping it, but I new if I did, the fresh pumpernickel from the bakery would never come to fruition, so to speak. (Stick with the plan Dash) The dial for temperature setting had loosened after years of abuse. I pulled the dial off and ran it through the dish washer, on the "Pots and Pan" cycle. *If you do this, place the dial in the silverware basket and place the basket on the TOP SHELF. I looked on line and saw a video of a guy that was redoing his blender. He put the dial on the bottom rack and ended up with a mister potato head ear. On YouTube, that video got like 27 hits!
The sides were solid chrome, and while they were in good enough shape, they didn't need to be re chromed, they just had a few dings in them. From the looks of it, the lip on the taller coffee cups seem to match up with the dings. After bumping out the dents, I decided to put two small pieces of door molding to prevent future dings. They are a cool avacado green, just like my old Plymouth Volare.
The heating element ended up being the tricky part. I dug around in box full of junk, left over from our garage sale and found our old "starter" toaster we had out grown and never sold. In one of my "think outside of the box" moments, I removed the heating elements from the old toaster, scrubbed them with a Brillo pad and tepid water, then meticulously interwove them into my project toaster. WOW!
After careful re assembly, I was ready to plug it in. A quick once over with the Armorall and my new machine was a thing of beauty. It was cooler than sliced bread! I didn't even want to make toast in it, heck, I just got done polishing it, so I pulled up my lawn chair in the kitchen, and had two pieces of plain rye bread and butter.
I knew company was due shortly, so I grabbed the lap top, pulled up pictures of the old toaster I had from Easter and made a cool slide show so folks could see the before and after shots. Company came and went all day long and I was able to just sit there in my kitchen watching people as they ogled my new toaster. I did make up a small note card the read,"please do not touch", but I didn't want to seem like a grumpy fanatic, so I drew a piece of bread and made a bubble so it looked like he was saying it.
All in all the project went well. On a side note, I ended up running to the store this evening and picking up a new toaster, you know, an every day user. I figure I have so much time into my show toaster, why mess it up. People are always saying, "you only get out what you put in", but me and my toaster beg to differ. To each his own!
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