Spent most of Saturday morning and the best part of the afternoon looking for a new oven and stove top, for when we finally get the kitchen renovated.  We went to all the usually department stores, electrical stores, even some specialist kitchen places such a Kleenmaid.  I was very impressed with the Kleenmaid equipment.  The store man at Kleenmaid pointed out some very useful facts for us, which I explain below.

Very nice vintage oven

The most noticeable thing about the Kleenmaid ovens were that that the doors felt strong and heavy (like an oven door should feel).  So many of the other ovens we checked out that day had light, thin doors which when opened felt like I was going to pull the oven out of the wall.  A nice thick oven door with a smooth mechanism shows quality.  The benefit of having a thicker oven door is that more insulated glass can be put inside it.  We asked various other stores about their oven design and most had only 2 panes of heat resistant glass.  The Kleenmaid ovens had three panes of heat resistant glass.  The benefit of the extra glass is two fold.  Firstly, if less heat can escape your oven will perform better and keep a more constant temperature.  The second benefit is that any little one’s who decide to gaze into the oven to watch the cake rise, won’t burn their face on the glass.  Did you know that the door on some ovens can reach 100 degrees.  Water boils at that temperature, and if all that latent heat is escaping your wasting electricity or gas.

Just to be sure, I am not associated with Kleenmaid or have any connection with that company in any way whatsoever.  I was simply impressed with their products.  Sticking with the issue of heat escaping,  the Kleenmaid ovens also had an extra lip on the inside of the oven door which fits perfectly in the oven space (when the door closes).  This lip seals the oven a lot better that other ovens which just have an oven door with a glass pane in it.  The only thing most other brands use is a thin line of rubber around the oven opening to stop the heat escaping.  The Kleenmaid ovens have the extra benefit of this sealing lip which I think would help reduce any significant heat loss.

Typical Stainless Steel Kleenmaid Oven

Finally there was the grade of steel used and the price.  As we are renovating our home, with a view to selling it within 9 months, we didn’t really want to spend much money on a new oven etc.  Our budget was $1700.00 an that was pushing it.  We certainly didn’t need the best equipment money could buy, this would just be crazy as I doubt we would see that money returned once the house sold.  Nowadays the fashion in kitchens (at least in Australia) is to have the stainless steel modern look.  Most of the traditional white models have gone and are really quite hard to find.  We only saw 3 white store tops on our oven expedition.  The main trouble with steel is that cheaper quality steel can easily rust, dent, doesn’t hide finger prints and greasy hands as well;  also it can start to look pretty bad after a few bangs or scratches which can result in rust forming.  Higher grade steels on the other hand (cost more – of course) but they look better, are more resistant to hands touching them (finger print resistant) all the time and are much much stronger against bangs, dents and scratches.  The Kleenmaid gear we viewed was all made with the A grade quality steel.

So is it worth spending the extra money.  The Kleenmaid ovens were expensive.  The oven was $2000.00 and the stove top we look at was $1200.00.  A rather nasty dent in our kitchen renovation budget.  Yet, although we did not purchase the Kleenmaid gear, the store man did mention that having a quality oven and stove top (that comes with a 5 year warranty) in a newly renovated home is a very good selling feature.  The quality that oozes from these products will tell your Buyer that you cared for your renovation and did a good job.

So what did we buy.  After all that, we happened to see a place called Savage City.  Savage city has all sorts of kitchen benches, windows,doors, bathroom stuff, ovens, range hoods, taps etc etc all taken from newly renovated houses, apartments, liquidated stock.  They pretty much had everything we would need to do a great job on our kitchen.  We spent about 40 minutes looking around, checking out all the cupboards and bence tops and then found the oven section.  Wow!  There were some nasty old ovens (as you would expect) but there were more nice ones that bad.  We found a great stainless steel Westinghouse Oven with matching stainless cook top and after bargaining the owner down, walked away with them for $430.00.  The inside of this oven looked like it had never been used.  I expect it came from a rental home that had just had a renovation and hence the stove was lucky and didnt get much use.  So we did very well indeed and were quite happy with ourselves for saving so much money.  Our budget was $1700.00.  We spent $430.00.  Where was that travel brouchure………

Early Boss Oven with Glass Door

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