Every home improvement project has a story, some are just large than others. Ours starts with a cook (cooking professionally for 25 years) who has been working on a free, hand-me-down stove for 12 years. Granted, it was passed on from our good friends who own Cafe Miranda’s. But still. Before that it was an apartment stove, blessed with the beautiful, distinctive avocado color of the 70’s that had been spray-painted white, but was still showing through in places.
The stove – cleaned and almost ready to come into the house.
Some years later, I answer, with my heart beating practically out of my chest for fear that it’s already taken, an add in Uncle Henry’s for an old Vulcan restaurant stove. On the drive down to Portland with the whole family in the truck, I kept hoping that it would be in good shape. Ahhh. It was and it even had a salamander. A restaurant-style broiler that mounts at eye level rather than below the stove.
The salamander on it’s side (when it goes in, I’ll show it to you right side up).
We muscle the thing into the car, complete with a vent system that is bigger than my entire kitchen and head home with a pit stop to pick apples at a local orchard. During the muscling process, my husband is resigning himself to shoring up the floor in the kitchen before we install the stove, knowing with certainty that the 100 year old floor joists cannot support the weight of this behemoth.
And so before the stove is installed, the floor gets shored up and the very good husband injures his shoulder pretty seriously and the wife decides that she loves her husband more than the stove and the stove can wait.
Next chapter. The following fall, measurements are taken of the doorways. It is discovered that the doorways are just the wee-est bit smaller than the narrowest part of the stove. By 4-inches. A fan, vent, several trips to the hardware store, cleaning, checking to make sure the burners and pilots all work, several more trips to the hardware store.
The stove is now ready to install. All of the burners work including the stove. Next week it goes in! Thank you, husband, for the miles on your cute self (and the truck).
xo to my man,
Annie
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