So....here's how it all began. Our house is completely electric. Nothing gas, no fireplace, no chimney pipe. If we were still living in the Lone Star State I wouldn't have given this as much thought... However, now that we live in the Bluegrass State and what I think of as the frigid north, (yes, I'm spoiled) I get nervous thinking about crazy ice storms and no electricity for a week.... In April I looked on Craigslist for a wood stove to put in our kitchen. Nothing too big or fancy, just enough to put a pot of soup or beans on the top and heat the room up. I found a stove listed but no picture. After inquiring about the stove's availability and requesting a photo I completely forgot about it and life carried on.... three months later I got a reply AND photos! Turns out I was not inquiring about a wood stove after all, but a robin's egg blue Chambers Sove Model C. Of course, I didn't know that at the time. My thoughts were more like, "oh, it's a gas stove!" "Wow, it's so cool looking, too bad that's not what we're looking for..." Well, being the internet junkie that I am, I googled 'Chambers Stove' just to see what I was looking at... and then the madness began! If you too want to become obsessed with Chambers Gas Ranges Here's a good place to start. A list of their features can be found here. I love the quality craftmanship of it and that it was designed to be repaired should it ever break. Plus, how cool, to cook with the gas turned OFF using retained heat! Back to the story. The robin's egg blue Chambers was still available and I had first dibs.... loaded up the children, drove an hour and looked at it. Unfortunately, it needed more repair than I was prepared for and the asking price was completely out of our budget. I mean, so much out of our budget that I couldn't even make a reasonable offer. Back to Craigslist. This time I expanded my search... Found two available. One Model B and one Model C. Both White. The Model C is my preference, however it was $300 more than the Model B and its wasn't currently hooked up to gas. I knew that the Mister would need to see it in action in order to seal the deal. Plus, not only was the Model B a better price, it was being sold by the original owner's family. We rented an appliance dolly, borrowed a truck, made arrangements for the four children that couldn't fit in the truck, drove two hours, watched the stove in action, spent an hour plus prepping the stove to load, got it loaded, drove home, spent another hour plus unloading it and now it's waiting for me to start scrubbing the seventy years of grease build-up off! I can't wait to get it up and running! It will be a little while as there is lots I need to do, stove related and not.... I will be photographing the process, but in the meantime here is a picture of a Model B Chambers Stove. It is not robin's egg blue, it doesn't have the warming oven like a Model C, but the price was right ($200) and everything is in great working order with no rust to be found. Although it would be fun to someday find a C, I'm quite content with my B. :)
