Our new wood cook stove

We are now the proud owners of a Waterford Stanley wood cook stove similar to the picture above.  Thank you Ted for all of your help as we could not have gotten it onto our trailer without you.  It took 2 1/2 hours to get the stove apart and onto the trailer.  800 pounds of cast iron as a complete unit.  We may have gotten it down to 400 pounds after taking every part we could off the stove.  Thank goodness for levers, dollies, 2x4s and brute strength.  All together the trip took 10 hours; a long day of driving and hard work for the guys.

The original owner of the stove bought it because her grandmother had one that was close to 100 years old.  She had a lot of memories of visiting her grandmother in Ireland and many memories involved the cook stove.  She is selling her current house and can't take the stove with her; and the new owners don't want the stove.  She seemed happy to know that her stove was going to a good home and will be cherished for many years to come.

Now comes the hard work.  First, we must put the stove back together, minus the legs, before we forget how we took it apart.  Thankfully my husband found the manual online so we now have a very good diagram of how the whole thing goes together.  We also need to clean out the insides as I don't think the stove has been cleaned in 3 years.  All that creosote and ash around the cast iron firebox while it's in storage would invite moisture and lead to rust.

Wood cook stoves

I have wanted a wood cook stove since I started hearth cooking.  The technology is a little more advanced than making a "burner" of coals on the hearth floor, but they are much more practical and fuel efficient (and much easier on your back).  Soon after we moved into our schoolhouse we bought an old coal range from the 1940s or 50s.  It baked beautifully; something about that type of heat that made the best breads.  And sitting in front of the oven door was great for drying hair.  Unfortunately, the stove's firebox was too small to be our main heat source and frankly the stove was really ugly.

A true wood cook stove just wouldn't work in our current home.  The layout is all wrong and we needed the larger firebox and heat output of our Vermont Castings' Vigilant.  But when we started to design the interior changes in the new house it became apparent that a wood cook stove would fit in to the kitchen area.  We knew we needed a newer stove to get the UL listing so we wouldn't lose our homeowner's insurance.  There are two steel stoves, Pioneer and Baker's Choice, that I really didn't like the looks of and I wanted something sturdier.  The Elmira has a more solid top and is a bit ornate for my tastes as is the Heartland. Finally I saw someone mention a Waterford Stanley on a blog and I really liked the looks of this stove. It's also solid cast iron and considered the "work horse" of cook stoves.

But, ouch, the price!  I have been regularly checking out Craig's List for stoves and finally a Waterford Stanley came up.  I think we are going to look at it this weekend.  Hopefully it as nice as it looks like on line and I will have a wood cook stove finally.