I finally have a great cookstove!

I'll admit, I'm picky. I expect an awful lot out of my appliances. For instance, I like them to work. Just before Thanksgiving my gas cookstove stopped working...again...for the second time this year. The oven refused to heat up, and the button that adjusted the temperature required you to rub next to it in little circles to adjust it. I had the stove a little more than 10 years and had to have it repaired countless times.

A ten-year-old stove...of course it stopped working. How can you expect something to last for over a decade? I think I did already mention I expect a lot out of my appliances.

Thus began the search for the perfect stove. I started at the store, with a list. I've always hated electric stoves, so it had to be gas. I'm a practical woman. I want us to be able to cook when the power goes out. Granted, that doesn't happen very often, but we are quite a ways outside of town. My failed stove had a gas oven, controlled by electronics...which failed over and over again. What the stores had for sale were just more of the same. No thanks.

At least now we knew we were going to buy something pre-owned. That is the more eco-friendly option anyway. My long-suffering husband and I started looking through the adds for pre-owned stoves and I drooled over the gorgeous old 1950's models but, I used to rent a place with a stove from the 1960's with a pilot light that always went out. It required a screwdriver to get at the pilot light and filled my apartment with gas regularly. So to make this an insane amount harder, I decided no electronic oven temp controls, and no pilot light.

We did find a brand called Unique that makes them new, but after looking at the antique stoves I also wanted something beautiful, and the Unique brand stoves were just utilitarian, modern stoves.

Eventually I gave up, I had the flu, and just couldn't deal with my own insane restrictions. 

My husband however didn't give up. He found me the best surprise I could have hoped for. He continued showing me beautiful things. Eventually he found a stove that met all my insane demands. Just as importantly for me, it was also insanely beautiful.​

It's a Skelgas Estate, and the best I can tell it comes from the mid 1930's. My husband hid it from me and made sure it was in working condition before he ever brought it home. There are no electronics to go bad, there is no pilot light, and it's beautiful. It has to be lit every time it's used, and I'll admit it was daunting the first time I lit the oven, but now, I can tell you I don't want to go back to a modern stove. This thing is amazing. It can do everything my modern stove could do, and more. The most import thing it can do that my modern stove couldn't was last for 90-ish years.

​Oh, and until I had a warming shelf, I didn't realize how useful a warming shelf is. Why did we stop putting warming shelves on our stoves?

Even the most utilitarian parts of this stove are designed to be beautiful. The only problem this presents is that they are hard to replace. This stove came with four burners in various states of breakage. One is intact, the next has a small crack, the third is cracked in half but still usable, the last is in multiple pieces. My husband found a place that is making us new ones based off of what's there. They aren't finished yet, but what we have hasn't caused me any problems so far.

​The next "issue" is the oven. The actual temperature of the oven is different then the dial says, but that was easily bypassed with an oven thermometer. Problem solved, much cheaper than the hundreds of dollars my last oven regularly required to reach the right temperature.

Every single day I can't get over how well this stove works. Only one thing reminds me of it's age: the shutoff valve we installed so that we can be sure it was safe in our home. Sorry, I'm just not very trusting. It doesn't seem to have any issues, but I figure it's better to be overly cautious.

In summary, I wish everything could work out this well. I wish all my appliances were this durable, and beautiful. 

Now I can't wait for the rest of my kitchen to fail so that my husband can find equally beautiful and innovative solutions for the rest of my kitchen appliances.