We took ours apart, and my husband also took some pieces to the car wash for a good cleaning. I still give it a good cleaning several times a year, and we pull it out once a year to clean behind. It cooks wonderfully, and we are thinking of keeping it for our new kitchen when we build our new house later this year....

Becky

You might want to check on the Appliance Forum as well.

Personally, I used LOTS of elbow grease, oven cleaner on parts in plastic bags overnite, rustoleum in silver for under the chrome top. Once you get the exterior clean, the stuff they make to clean glass top stoves keeps it looking very nice.

For removing rust, you can use coke and tinfoil, barkeepers friend or woodbleach. Just know that once you remove it, you may also remove some of the chrome, too, depending on its condition. It will re-rust without treatment.

For internal rust (inside the ovens) if you don't want to get it done professionally, you can get paint made for gas fireplaces and grills (high heat paint). It isn't pretty, but it will work. You can find it in black spay paint almost anywhere, but the paint in colors, only on line.

Are you thinking of a total tear down, or just a kickbutt cleaning? If you're going to attempt to rebuild valves and re-insulate, I would seriously recommend buying the guides.

Hopefully Circuspeanut will chime in here soon.

Looking forward to seeing your photos.

Becky, thanks for your feedback, I found the appliance forum and posted there too.

Virginia

I bought an O'Keefe & Merritt on Craigs List and restored it for my kitchen remodel 2 years ago. It's a gas stove, model 600-G from about 1949.

I ADORE it; it's the best thing about my whole kitchen. I even found yellow subway tile to match its cheerful knobs.

You can get almost all of the replacement parts immediately for a chunk of $$ at specialty restoration places online, or you can haunt eBay and CraigsList to find them over a longer period of time. I did both.

For advice, I relied mostly on these two online sites:

http://www.antiquegasstoves.com/
http://www.antiquestoves.com/toac/

who were both very friendly and knowledgeable about my stove. If necessary, of course, there are also outfits that are happy to have you ship your stove cross country to them for fixing it up, but that begins to run into the thousands.

Califsouthpaw: yes, you just start unscrewing! It's pretty self-explanatory once you begin. The doors lift upwards to slide off once you've undone the screws.

What I did:
I took it apart and cleaned the bajeezus out of it with Barkeepers' Friend and some supposedly "green" automotive grease remover.
Got some valve lube ($10), new valve gaskets ($16) and a booklet ($12) to completely clean out all the knobs/valves. This was really rewarding and I recommend doing it to get the knobs back up to full ease of use.

I got new stainless simmer caps ($10 each) and a new regulator for natural gas ($35) because mine was adjusted for propane. I re-insulated the whole thing with new stove insulation (c. $210), got a brand new oven thermostat ($260) -- both expensive but worth it. It is better insulated than the 3-year-old Maytag it replaced.

I used special porcelain paint to retouch chips ($50), and am saving up to get the burner grates re-porcelained ($40 each plus shipping) and the top plates re-chromed (c. $200 for all 3).

When I was done, I had the whole shebang checked out by a professional gas guy ($150 for 3 hours, this included installation).

So: in the end, it may not really be much cheaper than a regular stove, but it was very worth it to me and may be to you, too.

Advantages:

--The range is spacious, lots of room to set pot lids and hot pans aside as you cook, and the burners are spaced nicely for even my biggest pots.

--The built-in stovetop grill is incredibly effective, and the Grillevator is worth its weight in gold for broiling. Many OKM models have a second, regular broiler underneath the oven if it's ever called for.

-- The oven is smaller, but this means that it preheats quicker and there are no cold or drafty spots: I've found that my baked goods & casseroles cook perfectly and evenly all over.

-- The OKM models come with a simmer function on all burners which is fabulous, no guessing about how high to leave the flame. (It's really surprisingly modern.)

-- The top cover is awesome - if you haven't quite had time to clean before guests arrive, slap that baby down over the burners for extra room and a smooth clean surface.

-- The enameled exterior beats any modern finish hands-down. Swipe and it's clean. And it is glossy and delicious. For a certain amount of $$ you can even have the exterior panels re-porcelained in any color you desire.

Drawbacks:

-- If you want zillion-BTU burners for wok stir-fries, you won't get them. But the 12,000 - 15,000 BTUs work just great for everything else, and you can tweak them as necessary for more or less flame output. (These are those fan-shaped tabs that sit right behind the valves under the top edge.)

-- The 40" width means you can't find a new ready-made range hood that's an exact match - hoods come in 36" or 48". We wound up making and tiling our own vent hood.

-- Almost all of these models have a pilot light. This means that the stove retains a certain amount of heat at any time, which is unnoticeable for us here in cold Maine, and the cats love it, but might be an issue in a really hot climate.

That's probably more than you ever wanted to know, but please just give me a holler if you need any details after you roll up your sleeves. :-)

I rarely see discussions about the BTUs of vintage stoves. How do you know yours? 15K is as high as you'll get today without stepping up to a "prosumer"-type range like a Bluestar. Of course, I have a 15K burner right now, but it's one of those hilariously worthless closed burners, which is apparently designed to keep the center of a pot cool while lighting the cook on fire.

I never understood "closed burners" - what does that even mean? If it's closed, how does the gas get out? And how do you char peppers on it, or light celebratory cigars?

Closed burners are supposed to be easier to clean because nothing gets down into the innards of the stove.

Obviously they seem helpful if you like to squirt ketchup on your range and then clean it up while cooking. In reality, they tend to bake food onto the range top.

Bluestars, Capital Culinarians and perhaps a few others have open burners designed to heat the center of the pan:

If you are wondering what burner shape has to do w/ open vs. closed, I can't exactly explain it. Thermador has sort of star shaped burners but they're closed. I think a closed burner needs to be a little more bulbous for the design to work, so you can't really bring the flame all the way into the center.

As you can see, old ranges all used to have open burners:

We have one of the smaller O'Keefe and Merrits---34.5" instead of the big 39.5" models. It's a little less of everything---only one oven and broiler, and 9K and 12K BTU burners with a griddle instead of 12K and 15K like peanut has. We have a regular broiler under the oven, but no Grillevator. It's been great to use nonetheless, though, and has the plus of fitting into modern kitchens a bit more easily---we used a standard 36" range hood over it and built a space for a 36" range that our cabinetmaker trimmed out to get a snug fit around the OKM while making it easy to unscrew the trim to fit a standard 36" range for some future owner who doesn't like vintage. The only real downsides I've found are the pilot light always on (we split the difference on that and opted not to put heat in our kitchen since we live in a temperate climate; the stove is the only heat source). The oven is also small if you ever need to cook on full sheet pans. (Half fits fine.)

I cleaned ours with Simple Green, plus some Bon Ami and Barkeeper's Friend on the chrome. Our enamel was in good shape until we whacked it with a cast iron sink (don't ask...) so I ordered some porcelain touch-up paint for that; if that doesn't work, our local repair shop will sell us a replacement side panel from their parts warehouse for $75, which is far less than shipping the one we already have off to get re-enameled. Our burner grates are actually currently off being re-porcelained at the place circuspeanut linked to above; their prices were very reasonable since we were doing all four. The one thing we haven't decided what to do with yet is the griddle cover, which has rust spots, but which doesn't make sense to re-chrome since then it won't match anything else and may or may not fit over the griddle anymore. We'll see.

Also, on the open v. closed burner bit, I will say that one really big plus to the vintage stoves is that the burners themselves are pretty easy to remove and wash if you ever have a huge spill (I once had candy syrup boil over and coat the burner, which was awful!) The little burner drip trays are handy too, but nothing like pulling the burner itself out and scrubbing it in the sink. Ditto for the oven floor---I *love* that you can just lift it out and take it outside for a heavy-duty cleaning.

Maybe Circus said this but if you take apart the internals... take detailed pictures with pertinent notes of ALL of it BEFORE you dismantle it. I saved our bacon a few times.

Also, on the Chambers lovers website, there is a guy that has a business fixing and supplying parts for all kinds of old stoves. And he knows just about anything and was always happy to chime in. I highly recommend that site even if it's mostly about Chambers stoves.

It was worth it to us and I love my Chambers stove. Those old stoves have a beauty not to mention a quality construction that newer ones rarely touch.

FWIW, we did spring for re-chroming the top and some other pieces, made a world of difference and was well worth the $$.

"THE TYPICAL QUESTION: I saw a really old post you did about your broken stove door. I have the same problem with my oven door and was wondering if you ever found out how to access the spring thingy?

MY TYPICAL RESPONSE: Yes, i did - and it is funny - approximately every 4 months someone emails me about this question - here is what i have been telling others who ask:

Yes, I did find out how to fix it - it is pretty easy.

Remove the screws holding on the side of the oven (they are on the back). Then, remove the side panel - it will take a little shifting and pushing, but you will get it mostly off.) Then, you will see the pully and spring.

Replace that and hook it into the hole and reassemble. It has been about 7 months since I fixed it so I am a little foggy on the details - but if you come across any questions, feel free to email."