Just Visiting a Victor Countess!

Today we read about another wood cook stove for sale locally. Even though it was after dark and in a snow storm, with icy roads, we went to go look at it. We had asked before we drove, almost an hour, if the stove would also burn coal, or just wood. We were told it would burn both. I wasn't sold on the price, $1,500. A bit too high priced for a stove that has only been used as a decoration for more than the past 15 years. But, we did drive out to see the stove.
Upon arriving at the rural farm house we were ushered into the room where the stove sat in a corner, unused. It looked small to me. A REAL stove, but for some reason, small.

The outside of the stove looked clean and fairly well taken care of.

The inside of the oven just seemed small to me. It also didn't have as many levels for the oven rack. Roger said that the oven door seemed to need tightened. I also noticed that the stove didn't have a lot of clean outs under the oven area, although Justin did find one I hadn't.

We looked in the fire box and it didn't have any fire brick, (which is needed for burning coal), nor did it have ANY fire grates at all, (neither wood nor coal), and therefore, as it sits, it isn't set up to burn either wood or coal.

Inside the clean out door the bin area didn't have any ash bin, or bucket.

Rog and Justin checked over the stove, under, over and inside of it!

The stove was missing the right side shelf.

Although the stove looked small to me, the numbers cast on the stove were 8-20 which were the same as the stove in Rhode Island. The 8 stands for the size 'lids' or 'eyes' on the stove stop and the 20 stands for the oven size.

Looking down into the top of the cook top, see what we saw? A comb! (Wonder if the draft slide works)

Roger was using a flashlight to check out the stove, looking at several spots that the man in Rhode Island told us to look for defects!

There was an oven door thermometer in the door, unknown if it worked.

We decided to leave the stove where it sat as the price was too high, even though the stove was in basically good shape, it needed work and needed to have several parts replaced.

So, we left and traveled the hour back through the Pennsylvania winter weather to go home. On I-79 the traffic was traveling at a top speed of 35 mph due to slick roads.