My wife is the best!

We're thrilled to bits with our new stove, a Grand model 850 from sometime between 1945 and 1952. You've read enough about this, surely. In my search for more information about Grand stoves and the Cleveland Co-Operative Stove Co., I came across the stove below on Craigslist, locally, for $100.



This stove is similar in many respects to ours: the burner assemblies and grates are the same, as are the knobs; perhaps even the clock is the same, though I cannot be sure of this. Of greater interest are the doors, which appear to be identical, with the exception of the oven door, which has a window. A window for our oven would be nice. I'd have to get around to finding a replacement lightbulb for the oven for it to be useful, but that is a small issue.

Back to the title of this entry. Now, if I were a single man, or had a less strong-willed wife, I would have waited a while longer and attempted to purchase this stove for parts. I would have swapped out the oven door with the existing one on our stove. As it is, A. is a wonderful wife and gave me the Look of Doom™ when I suggested that we purchase it.

If not for her, I would quickly fill this house (or any other house, regardless of size) with mostly useless junk. I appreciate her ongoing struggle in this matter.

Update: The Cleveland Co-Operative Stove Company

I've written some about our new stove and the maker of the stove, the Cleveland Co-Operative Stove Company.

Cleveland; the Making of a City by William Ganson Rose provides an excellent early history of the company, on page 337.

W. S. Chamberlain, laywer, offered a tract of swam pland (Central Avenue and East 67th) near the Cleveland & Pittsburgh railroad to a group of Buffalo iron molders as an industrial site, if they would give him an interest in a proposed foundry. The Cleveland Co-operative Hollow Ware, Stove & Foundry Company was inforporated the followin year with Chamberalin as president. For forty years, the company concentrated on makin the massive, ornate, coal-burning stoves of the period. In 1909, it brought out a complete line of gas ranges. The entire plant was leveled by a storm this year. "Grand" ranges, stoves, air-conditioning equipment, and gray-iron castings produced by The Cleveland Co-Operative Stove Company, found profitable markets. James Mitchell became president in 1934.

I haven't been able to dig up much else about the company, so I contacted the appropriate subject departments at Cleveland Public Library.

The Business, Economics, and Labor Department was able to provide the following information, from their Cleveland Corporation Files:

1945: Grand Home Appliances became a division of Cleveland Cooperative Stove Company.

1948: Grand Industries Inc. became successor to Cleveland Cooperative Stove Company and Grand Home Appliances Company became a division of Grand Industries.

1952: Grand Industries Inc. went out of business. Its Grand Home Appliances Division, along with other divisions were sold out to different interests or abandoned.

Cleveland Chamber of Commerce indicate that purchaser of some fo the stove assets when Grand Industries sold out was Sunray Stove Company, Delaware, Ohio.

1982: Sunray Stove Company out of Delaware, Ohio is out of business. It was cancelled by Operation of Law December, 22, 1982, per the Ohio Secretary of State's website.

Stove update

Our beautiful new stove is now functioning properly. The problem with the pilot light on the one side was resolved by scraping some cruft from the inside of the pilot light and turning the adjustment screw for the pilot light a bit.

Of course, initially I turned the pilot light up too much. I realized this later when I thought I smelled something by the stove. I held my hand over the left pilot light and found it was much warmer than the area over the right pilot light. With some trial and error, I got the pilot light as low as I could without it going off.

Now I'm just trying to figure out how to light the broiler. Right now, I have to use a match and light it in a minimum of two places - and this is for one large burner assembly. There has to be a better way.

We have stove! (mostly)

I picked up the stove this afternoon and lugged it into the house. I even got it hooked up and working, mostly. I say mostly because the two burners on the left will not light. Their pilot light is lit, and they can be lit by matches, but they won't light automatically. I have to wonder if this has something to do with the burner assemblies falling out while I was loading the stove into the van.







As to the question of how many people are required to move such a beast, the answer is two men in decent condition or one idiot with a heck of a lot of determination and mechanical advantage.

Look, there's an oven!

And there's another oven! And there's a third oven! 'Cause our house has three ovens!

Yes, three ovens, but not for long! The reason there are three ovens is because one of the two ovens in our old stove was DOA. It leaked gas and didn't run. We've been looking for a replacement stove to fit in our kitchen ever since. Finding a 40" wide stove that is still operational and hasn't been sitting in someone's basement for a decade or two is a bit of a challenge. Even more of a challenge is the desire to not have a stove with a massive dashboard.

I found the above Grand stove on my local Craigslist, after an extensive search over a 6 state area. It's not quite the stove of my dreams (I would have really really liked one with either six burners or a griddle in the center), but it's pretty darn good. The seller and I have agreed on a price, so it's now just a matter of negotiating a date and time for pickup.

This leads me to another matter:

FREE STOVE!!!



We will be getting rid of our late 1960s stove made by the Crown Stove Works of Cicero, Illinois. Free to anyone who wants it. Even more free to anyone who will volunteer, quickly, to help me schlep it out of the kitchen!

If you have even a small degree of interest in this stove, say something NOW. If you don't want the whole stove, but just need some parts, let me know and I'll see if I can pull them. I can't promise that removal won't involve a reciprocating saw, but I do promise that I'll make my cuts nice and broad and include more material than needed, not less.

Here are the problems with the stove: three of the four burners will not light; one oven will not light; the springs on the oven doors are completely shot. On the good side, I have a set of NOS burner caps for this stove that I'll toss in free.

One More Stove Item

If you're looking for a wonderful 1950s stove, I strongly encourage you to check out this $400 Kenmore in Parma Heights, Ohio.

I went to look at this stove with A. and would have purchased it on the spot had it not been two inches too wide (42"). Actually, I wanted to purchase it anyway, but the voice of reason intervened. It has four burners with a griddle in the center. Underneath, one half is an oven and the other, a broiler. The top burners have a pilot light and the oven and broiler must be lit manually.

I've never seen another unrestored stove of this vintage in this condition. The oven and broiler looked as though they'd never been used. To clarify: they still had that newish sheen! It was hooked up and in use when we saw it. The only thing that did not work was the clock.

Again, if you're looking for a 1940s or 1950s stove, this may well be the one. I firmly believe that it would be worth driving a couple hundred miles to pick up.

About the Intro

In my introduction I state that this house will be "less of the "how are we going to make dinner without a functioning kitchen" type of place. Unfortunately, this is not quite the case.

As I have mentioned previously, the c. 1950 Crown gas stove that came with the house was pretty much DOA. As such, my amazing wife has been preparing meals using a single electric burner, a microwave, and a toaster oven. She's been doing an impressive job of it, too.

We've been making very slow progress on this front, primarily because none of the options are especially attractive. We haven't had much luck finding a replacement stove on Craigslist or eBay - the closest decent contenders have been in Chicago, Illinois, 350 miles away. The cheapest new 40" gas stove is $1600. Putting a narrower stove between the two cabinets would probably be ugly. And while there's a certain novelty to installing two 20 inch apartment stoves, that doesn't seem quite right either.

So we're waiting and hemming and hawing. If you have a 40" white (or even some other color - just not stainless) gas stove that is in good operating condition, and hasn't been sitting in your basement for the past three decades, I may be interested, if you're within 300 miles of us. Of course, we're probably just going to wait some more, as my wife bakes Christmas cookies two at a time in the toaster oven.

In other news, last night I tried to hook up the water line for our new refrigerator. A. had, at my request, purchased a 10' icemaker hook up kit. I pulled out the old copper line, which had been crushed, and enlarged the hole. I hooked the hose up to the refrigerator, and, with a great deal of difficulty, used the old copper line to thread it through the floor. I threaded it under the existing pipes in the basement (note: proximity to the hot water line may be an issue) and came up short. My hope was that the location of the refrigerator was the issue, so I pushed it back into place. Nope - still about 8" short.

I hoped that I'd be able to buy a new line, just a bit longer, with all the fittings at the store today, but alas, they are not avaiable longer than 10'. I guess it's just a matter of waiting for it to do the plumbing work itself.

I need stove help!

As as been previously discussed, our 1950 Crown stove is pretty much DOA. I've been looking for another stove to fit in between the existing cabinets. The current stove is 40 inches wide, so we need a replacement that is the same size.

I'm looking for a stove that meets the following criteria:
1. 40 inches wide
2. natural gas
3. doesn't have a huge "dashboard"
4. is currently operational

I'm willing to drive a reasonable distance, but even going as far away as Chicago or Baltimore, I'm having trouble finding anything. I've considered buying a new stove, but they are simply too expensive - the lowest price I've seen is around $1600.

Then I had a brilliant (or stupid) idea: why not buy 2 20 inch wide apartment stoves? They're available new, so I wouldn't have the hassle involved with an old stove, and wouldn't have to drive a gajillion miles to get it. I could have two ovens and all the joys of eight burners, for perhaps 1/2 to 2/3 of a 40" stove. I might even be able to find a pair used, locally.

Is there any reason why this shouldn't work? I assume that it can't be that difficult to install a wye to split the gas line...

Anyone want a Crown stove?

I wrote about our Crown gas range a while ago. The stove appears to have been made in the 1960s.

It is not in good operating condition, although the PO claims that it was the last time she tried to use it. When we tried to use it, we were only able to get one burner to light and one half of the oven to light. According to the repair person that came out today, the complete burner units need to be replaced, and they are hard to come by. Additionally, some part in the oven (I'm unsure which one, though I suspect A. may be able to tell me) also needs to be replaced.

We're going to look at a great looking stove we found on Craigslist tomorrow evening. If you know of a source for the parts that we need and can let us know before that time, I'd appreciate it. Alternately, if you want the stove, or want some parts off of it, I'd be more happy to accomodate. I can hold onto it for a while, but not too long...

The stove we hope to get looks like it should be fun. It's another double oven stove, and has a griddle in the center, too! As is often the case, the clock doesn't work, but I don't see that as a real issue.

Our stove

Our stove was made by Crown, probably in the 1960s. At present, it is barely functional - only one burner and one half of the oven works. I hope that it can be repaired, because we like it and there aren't many new stoves that are 40" wide. I've looked on Craigslist and eBay, and there seem to be plenty of used stoves this side within reasonable distance for around $200, which I've set as our budget for repairing this one. Either way, I think, we win.

I haven't been able to locate much information about Crown. They seem to have gone out of business in the 1960s.