Remember my recent post on “The Miracle Cake“? I was writing about my temporary stove and how I really wanted to get my old vintage stove repaired. Well, when we went to the Dallas area a few weeks ago, we took my old stove to get it repaired. We hauled it all the way there and ended up bringing it all the way back again. The restoration and repair place wanted 1800.00 just to get it working and 6500.00 for complete restoration. (Try running that one by your husband. It isn’t pretty.) My friend Eve posted my dilemma on her facebook page and found one of her friends who had a similar stove to give away. On our way out of town, we picked it up, hoping to combine the two into one working stove.

That was the plan when we got home. We stored them back into one of our sea containers planning to tackle the job as soon as possible.

Then a couple of nights later, Nathan was curious about how much a stove like mine, fully restored would sell for. He got on ebay to search. He didn’t find any priced as high as 6500.00, but he did find an incredible deal.

Most of the O’keefe & Merritt stoves for sale on ebay seem to be in California. There’s some great deals, but who happens to be going to L.A.?

Well, this deal was just too good to pass up. An O’keefe & Merritt stove fully restored and then never used again for only 399.00! It seemed too good to be true. But it was everything it was advertised to be. We found an online shipping auction that is affiliated with ebay called uship. A really sweet gal from San Diego picked up our stove and delivered it Sunday afternoon to Matador. Even with the shipping, it only cost us a little over half what the man in Dallas wanted just to get our old one running.

Meet Carly from California. She had several blow-outs on an RV she hauled most of the way and a flat on her pickup. She said only in Texas did anyone stop to help. She had three guys help her up by Amarillo.

Here it is. Isn’t it perfect?

 

Here’s Nathan and Laredo tweaking it and making the necessary adjustments from natural gas to propane burning.

Honestly, the chrome on the surface is like a mirror.

All the pilots lit, all the burners burn, both the oven and the broiler oven work and even the lights work!

It’s clean inside and out. I figured I’d better get a shot under here. It might never look this good again.

Here’s the girls fixing the first Shannon lunch on it.

And here’s momma. So happy.