The curse of vintage

[godfry n. glad]

My stove, a 1954 O'Keefe and Merritt gas range and oven, with a griddle and cover, as seen here:

http://www.freethought-forum.com/forum/gallery/files/7/0/kitfrmdnette.JPG

sprung a leak some time back and I finally got the gas company over to test it. Although he noted that the leak was very small, it still required that he disconnect the appliance and urge me to get repair.

Easier said than done when you have vintage appliances.

I, of course, used the gas company's "certified" list for referral to a repair person. The company they referred me to does not work on O'K&M ranges. They also happen to be the only company to which the gas company refers.

In to the yellow pages I went. Working my way through the appliance repair listings, I was told that not only did most of the companies not deal with O'K&M, but they were not supposed to work on ranges which still had open pilot lights.

Finally, I stumbled across an appliance repair company that had an "old guy" who repaired the "older stuff"...but he only works Mondays and Tuesdays. A call back was required. My next call connected to a fellow who didn't work on them, but knew of a guy who did. He gave me the name of that outfit and told me to ask for "Mike". Well, "Mike" wasn't in, so I spoke to the guy who picked up the phone. He listened to my story, told me that he worked on them and he would be happy to look at it. From his perspective, it might require just tightening the valve to the manifold, or it might involve extracting the valve, which could ruin it. Either way, if it needed replacing, it might take up to eight weeks to get parts, depending.

So nameless guy from this company is due to show at my door at 8 am next Monday morning (he works Monday through Thursday) to assess the situation.

Until then, no stove, no oven. Microwave and boiler only.

[Leesifer]

I hope it doesn't take 8 weeks godfry. You'll have to eat out a lot.

I only use my microwave for heating leftovers up or re-heating my coffee. I don't like to use it to "cook" things.

[livius drusus]

Aren't you tempted to buy a new appliance? The 1950's made some charming ovens, but functional concerns would definitely spur me to look for charm in this millennium.

[Kyuss Apollo]

They make some "vintage looking" appliances that are totally modern inside here (http://www.heartlandapp.com/Classic/Gas_Ranges/).

http://www.heartlandapp.com/images/zoom/7100range.jpg

They make a whole range of products...

[wildernesse]

Sounds like you need a toaster oven!

[Watser?]

I hope it doesn't take 8 weeks godfry. You'll have to eat out a lot.

I only use my microwave for heating leftovers up or re-heating my coffee. I don't like to use it to "cook" things.

re-heating coffee? :shudder:

[Deadlokd]

I hope it doesn't take 8 weeks godfry. You'll have to eat out a lot.

I only use my microwave for heating leftovers up or re-heating my coffee. I don't like to use it to "cook" things.

re-heating coffee? :shudder:

I was about to say the exact same thing. Double shudder.

[Ensign Steve]

Toaster ovens are the shit!

And reheating coffee is totally okay if you refrigerate the coffee immediately while it's still hot from brewing and then heat it back up later.

[Kyuss Apollo]

NO! NO!

Reheating coffee is totally WRONG!! AHHHHHHHHHHHGHHH!!!

:hung:

[viscousmemories]

They make a whole range of products...
:rimshot:

[godfry n. glad]

heh...I regularly reheat coffee in the micro.

Of course, my SO comes from the construction trades side of the engineering field and is used to what I call "acid vat" coffee, where the drip coffee has been simmering in a pyrex pot for hours in the job shack...being carefully rendered down into a fluid which, under the right circumstances, could eat through most porous materials. She keeps trying to punch up the "oomph" of the coffee by adding more ground coffee to the basket just for our morning coffee (I refuse to tell her about grinding it finer). I think she'd be happy drinking Turkish coffee on a daily basis. Given that, micro-reheated coffee is nothing.

Well....our 1954 O'K&M was completely refurbished in 1999. Ivy paid out a little under $2000 to have the thing redone, top to bottom (it was given to her, so she didn't have any problem spending that kind of money on it). Unfortunately, the specialty contractor she hired (with excellent refs) died before he got the thing put back together. His widow had to pull together some of his students to reassemble the 33 stoves he had in parts at the time. Our stove was supposed to be gone for six weeks, but ended up being nearly a year. We lived with a two-burner hotplate, microwave and water boiler for that time. For this reason, I am reluctant to toss it an start anew....plus, since the thing is in sparkling condition, I suspect that the problem may be as simple as a loose valve that just needs to be tightened.

The irony of the whole thing is that I have two professional mechanical engineers living in the household. Our lodger, a specialist in materials forensics, has already agreed to tinker with it if I cannot locate an appropriate tradesman to do the job.

I'm hoping for a simple and quick resolution. If there is nonesuch, then I'll consider replacement....and yeah, I knew about the vintage copies now available, thanks.

[godfry n. glad]

Aren't you tempted to buy a new appliance? The 1950's made some charming ovens, but functional concerns would definitely spur me to look for charm in this millennium.


Actually, no.

Functionally, the refurbished range worked better than most modern equipment I've seen. Of course, it's gas, rather than electric, which seems to be the prevailing cooking source locally, and electric just does not measure up. But even most of the newer gas ranges I've seen just do not compare to the quality of my O'K&M.

If I bought new, I might have to buy something made in China....

[Kyuss Apollo]

Well, good luck getting your stove repaired Godfry--after investing that much time and energy into it, I can see how you guys would be reluctant to give it the ol' heave-ho.


I so miss having a gas stove...


Someday!

[Dingfod]

There's a place near me that works on these old stoves. They have a number of them for sale in their storefront window. I've been thinking about getting one if we do a kitchen remodel.

[Anastasia Beaverhausen]

They make some "vintage looking" appliances that are totally modern inside here (http://www.heartlandapp.com/Classic/Gas_Ranges/).

http://www.heartlandapp.com/images/zoom/7100range.jpg

They make a whole range of products...
:lecher:

[godfry n. glad]

Ha!

Lodger waltzes in this morning and asks me how I'm cooking my eggs. I tell him I'm not. He's evidently trying to cook scrambled eggs in the micro.

After he waltzed off, I got to thinking about when we had the stove refurbished. We lived with a the micro, boiler and a hotplate. Yeah...That's what we need now for doing skilletwork, a hotplate. Hmmm...I don't remember getting rid of the old hotplate. A quick trip down to the basement storage and, viola! ~ a large violin!

Uh...

Wait, no...

A two-burner hotplate, still in it's original box, with the original styrofoam spacers. That's my Ivy....

So, now we have a hotplate. Things are cooking up.

[Leesifer]

:pleased:

[beyelzu]

hotplates rule, there were times growing up when we didnt have a stove and my mom could make badass meals with nothing but a hotplate

[Ensign Steve]

Damn, bey, that's pretty low-budget.

[Kyuss Apollo]

When I was a young alcoholic in college, we used to have this electric stove that apparently wasn't very well grounded, and it kept shocking me if I leaned against it while cooking, which I did more often than I wanted to (both cooking and leaning into the stove and getting shocked).

One day after a getting shocked a bunch of times in quick succession I just pulled the stove away from the wall and rolled it out the front door into the yard. Then I went to Benny's and bought a hot plate. And a toaster oven. Came home and finished making dinner without another incident of electrocution.

Things were just simpler back then.