Jamie wrote:{snip}I will take a vintage stove over a "modern" one any day. My 1920's Tappan has served me well for over 25 years and will be functioning long after I'm gone. The most I have to do is to clean and regrease the valves every couple years. Using a "flint torch sparker" lighting the burners is a breeze.
I love your stove. Thanks for the vid too, though there were no surprises for me there, just confirmation.
We wound up going a bit more retro in look than our home's age for our stove, as I just fell in love with it when I saw it on Craig's List and it was bought way before we bought our home though we knew we wanted older. Ours is sort of at a sweet spot of stove manufacturing because it looks like a very old cast iron wood burning stove, but it was built brand new at the time with electrical components--it's not a retrofit of an older stove. It does weigh a ton because of the cast iron, but fortunately we will only have to move it again when we redo the kitchen and then maybe touch up paint down the road. Our kitchen is tiny so it's difficult to take an image of the entire stove without climbing on a ladder outside and shooting through a window. The shot below was taken while sitting on our sink. The local natural gas line stops a block from our house. We cannot get gas installed here.
We are a small family and it's an easy fifteen minute walk to the nearest grocery if the car dies/roads not plowed well. So getting a small fridge wasn't too big a stretch when we finally got one (didn't have one for a few months. It was winter, we were budget challenged, so we used a cooler on the porch then later the cellar to stave off the purchase.) This was not the model we intended, but budget made us change our plans to suit immediate needs. Later we also bought a small freezer during early Black Friday sales since my MiL had given us a Home Despot gift card. The freezer helps us with berries and bulk sales that would never all fit in the tiny freezer on our fridge--can't even fit a smaller frozen turkey for holidays in the upper door freezer.
Eventually, when the smaller fridge dies, we'll go back to our original plan, which is to make something more period looking like the last photo below to enclose the fridge only and freezer only, because why not if we can?
I am a huge fan of older appliances. I also do not like the planned obsolescence nonsense they do nowadays, and I especially do not like unnecessary circuit boards. I also like to live as utility conscience as possible, which fortunately my Floor Manager realized the wisdom of pretty quickly after we moved here. Last year we didn't even have an AC because our house stays darn cool if you play the window game right. We also have one twin fan window insert that helps draw in cooler night temps faster so Sean sleeps better. This year we did get one A/C for the office because I acknowledged the computers need it, but we've only recently started needing to use it temperature wise, and likely will stop in September. So no regrets to that addition for the slight bump in the bill if it helps the computer last longer.
