What is that noise and where is it coming from?!?

I wouldn't make a good detective...

A couple of weeks ago I started hearing this high-pitched sound in my kitchen.  I turned off all of the fluorescent lights thinking that they were the culprit.  Nope, I still heard it.  I checked everything that was turned on or plugged in and, for the life of me, I couldn’t tell where the sound was coming from.  When my husband came home from basketball practice he looked and couldn’t figure it out either.  We were stumped.

Our house was built in the late 70’s and the kitchen, much to my dismay, is not updated minus a few appliances that we bought after moving in 6 years ago.  Our cooktop is NOT one of the appliances that we’ve replaced.  After opening almost every cabinet in our kitchen I opened the one directly under our cooktop and that’s where the noise was the loudest.  My husband turned off the power to the cooktop and the noise persisted.  We tried everything we could think of.  We even talked to an electrician who said if it’s still making noise like that after cutting the power to the unit the motor must be fried.   We are planning on remodeling the kitchen but we’re still a few years off from saving the money we need to do it so now we’re in a bit of a pickle.  I don’t want to spend a ton of money on a new cooktop when we’ll just need to get the one that I actually want a few years down the road.  But, I can’t NOT have something to cook for my family on.

So, after 4 days of this insanity inducing noise and much researching online, I had my husband go to Sears and purchase the cheapest cooktop he could find.  $500 later he returned with a shiny, new cooktop that would do the trick until we remodel our kitchen.  I really didn’t want to spend the money but I was stuck…I had to cook.  I mean, going out to dinner every night for the next 4 years would be as much as my whole kitchen remodel.  After dinner that night I decided that I was going to treat myself to some ice cream (something I don’t normally have but considering the incessant noise in the kitchen and the stress of it all I figured I deserved it).  I opened up the utensil drawer (right next to the cooktop) and the noise got even louder!  I fumbled through the drawer and found our grilling fork with the built-in thermometer was the cause of all of this head-splitting noise.  The battery had gone dead and apparently that’s the indicator that it’s time to change them.

Thank God Sears has a wonderful return policy!