Magic Progress - Epilogue

It has been five years since I completed the restoration of the 1930 Magic Chef stove. This month it was finally moved from its place of storage in my daughter's basement to its rightful place in her newly remodeled kitchen.

In the final progress episode I chronicled how I had never tested the latest rebuilt version of the oven thermostat since the stove had been moved to my daughter's basement five years ago. My daughter very much wanted to include the Magic Chef stove as part of her remodel plans but she was a little concerned that we still didn't know if the oven worked properly.

After thinking on this for a few days I suggested to her that we plan for the use the Magic Chef stove in the remodel but that we only use the stove-top burners of the stove and not the oven. She admitted that she was a little nervous using a natural gas stove because electric stoves were all she had ever used . She said she thought she could probably be comfortable using the gas stove-top burners but she was really apprehensive about the gas oven.

To compensate for not using the oven portion of the Magic Chef stove I suggested we include a built-in electric wall oven in the remodel plans. She liked the idea. To be truthful, I too was less than comfortable with the operation of the oven portion of the Magic Chef stove. Not using the oven portion of the stove meant she could use the oven to store her pots and pans. This is an added bonus because the 1905 kitchen isn't especially overflowing with storage space

We also made one other concession to safety in the use of the stove. We decided to not use the pilot light for the stove-top burners. Although it worked perfectly she was not comfortable with having a pilot light that stayed on all the time. Nor was there a safety feature that shut of the gas if the pilot light went out. Luckily, the stove contained a feature that allowes the gas to the pilot light to be turned off. She has to light each burner manually when she uses the stove but that seems a small concession to her for the added peace of mind.

She's been using the stove for a month or so now and has become comfortable with using natural gas. She says it cooks much better than the electric stoves she has used in the past and she wouldn't want to go back to using an electric stove.