Vintage Stove

I have wanted a vintage stove since I was a child. My grandmother had an O'Keefe & Merritt, and I always thought it was the best. Christopher and I have his grandmother's old stove (O'Keefe & Merritt) that was put outside years ago, but it is not in our kitchen. It needs some serious restoration. It was my plan to get it restored this year. However, in a recent conversation with my friend, Tricia, she informed me she had a vintage stove (O'Keefe & Merritt) that she was thinking of selling. Of course I jumped at the opportunity! This stove (pictured above) is larger than the one that we already had and it has the grill cover. Getting this stove meant that we needed to take out more cabinets and counter space in our kitchen. We spent the weekend doing this two weeks ago. Last Saturday, we drove to Downey and picked up our vintage stove. We got it home and placed it in the kitchen. I was so excited! After four trips to the hardware store, we discovered that we need to replace the adapter on the stove along with the flex hose. It needs to be compliant with new codes. So here sits our "new to us" vintage stove. It has been too hot to cook the past few days, so I told Christopher that we could take a breath and get to fixing it later in the week or even next week. I'm really not in a rush in this heat. One day soon we will have a working stove and oven, and I will gladly cook a meal for Christopher on it. Until then, I sit here at my farm style kitchen table and admire it.

Hugs,
Jenni

The Strip

Whoever said that stripping paint off of a house was easy work… well actually, I’ve never heard anyone say that!  There is a simple reason.  It is a hard, labor intensive, time consuming task that is generally better suited for someone else.  In other words, normally I would hire someone to do it.  However, the last time we did that I was less than pleased with the staying power of the job.  So it is here that I have been for the last month offering my body and energy to the protective coating over this wonderful 1908 Craftsman home.  I’ve decided to do it the way my grandpa Graf did it.  That is, one wall at a time, every couple of weeks, every year, year after year.  So far everything is going ok.  It just takes a while.  My hands are pretty sore. So, I’ll check back in with you later with an update. For now, here are a few pictures to show you what I’ve been doing.  

All the best, 

Chris