Is all harvest gold the same?

[mm]

Is all harvest gold the same?

A guy who does home remodeling tells me he has a harvest gold electric stove in good condition from 1970.

Mine in a Whirlpool and matches the color of my Whirlpool refrigerator.

Did more than one company make the same color and if so, were they really the same color???

It's an hour or two away from here. I wish I had started with home remodelers right here, but I didn't**. I don't have to buy it until I see it, but it means driving a couple hours and probably renting a trailer which is a nuisance and a little money.

So what are the odds the colors are the same?

**I was about to buy a replacment thermostat for the current stove. I had moved the stove to look at the one it has now, and I only bumped it a little, something that wouddn't hurt it normally, but the fire changed the inside window glass and it shattered.

Is it possible to buy a piece of such glass and cut it to fit the window opening? The part is not available from Whirlpool.

Can I move the outer window to the inside and replace the outer window with lexan? Any other ideas?

Thanks.

[trader4]

You can buy a brand new stove for under $300 at local appliance stores. And I see them a lot cheaper than that, with maybe a small dent that isn't noticeable on Ebay or also local stores. I'd be going that route rather than driving 2 hours to find anitques from the 70s. Unless it spent it's life in the box, it's had 35 years of use at this point.

I'd be looking to replace that vintage fridge too. New one would probably save you $100 a year in energy, helping pay for it. Then you have a stove and fridge that match.

If you're hell bent on that stove, have the guy take a pic of it and see what it looks like. I would suspect that "harvest gold" was made by more than one manufacturer. Even if only one made it, the exact color could have changed from 72 to 78, etc.

[Caesar Romano]

On Sat, 05 Feb 2011 08:15:34 -0500, mm wrote Re Is all harvest gold the same?:

The odds are not good.

[mm]

I thought of heading this off in the first post but thought it would look cranky of me. Trader, you give a lot of good help to me and others here, for which I'm very grateful, truly, but I want a harvest gold stove, to match my harvest gold fridge. White and stainless are okay, and if I had no modern kitchen before, those appliances would be fantastic, but they are not improvements from my childhood, like harvest gold was and still is.

(My mother had a pink washer and dryer, Whirlpool, bought in 1957. Even though it's pink, for girls, I would sort of like that because it's not the same old white.)

I am afraid that color rendition could change at any of the several steps in this, and exact would only look close or close would look exact.

You're probably right. Maybe I can either find one nearby before he gets impatient with me, or I can find something else to do there to make the trip worthwhile if the stove isn't right.

Red said:

Good point. I can easily bring the drawer. The side that has been agaisnt the wall isn't visibly different from the front, but my kitchen faces north and the stove is on the other side of the room anyhow. But his might be much faded.

Hey, I just looked at mine, and it doesnt' even match itself. The top is lighter than the front! I thought maybe cleaning the front would help, since I just cleaned the top, but it didnt' make a difference. I thought maybe the ceiling light made a difference so Ibrought a lamp over, but it seems the front is darker than the top!

Maybe they did that on purpose for aesthetic reasons?

If not, maybe I can be as tolerant of an alien stove as I've been towards my own stove.

Thanks, Trader, and Red, and Caesar.

[Jon Danniken]

You can spend $700 for a new stove and still get a thin POS that you will regret buying within a short amount of time.

If your decor can handle it, purchasing old appliances with new consumables is an option if you like well-built products that don't come in at > $1000.

Jon

[George]

A new $300 stove would be a piece of junk. Even new ones that are much more expensive are junk. We remodeled the kitchen maybe 8 years ago and bought the high end of conventional gas stoves. The enamel has flaked off the cast iron grates and the legends have already worn off two of the knobs.

I put the old stove in a rental apartment. The finish on everything is like new and the tenant bakes frequently and loves how well the oven works. I did spend a lot of money to keep it in repair though. The igniter module died and it cost $35 and 10 minutes to replace it. The new stove has a hot surface igniter that runs anytime the burners are needed (what a stupid design) and is a lot more expensive to repair.

[Steve B]

But they all look so bad that no one notices anyway. I prefer the turquoise myself.

Avocado is second.

Steve

[krw]

Our first house did you one better. The fridge was avocado and the stove harvest gold. Add in the *yellow* (nothing goes with yellow) bathroom fixtures and it was perfect!

[mm]

It turns out my stove doesn't even match itself. The top is a lighter color than the front. I don't know the proper terms. They're the same color but the intensity is less.

[aemeijers]

I yellow bathroom fixtures. Makes me feel like a time traveler. I know exactly the yellow you are talking about- quite popular for a couple years, back in the day. I even have a real Ma Bell rotary desk phone in that shade, out back somewhere.

[Kuskokwim]

There is a standard set for colors such as these (harvest gold, almond, bisque, etc, etc.). Not only for appliances, but also for things such as plumbing fixtures.

It's done by an non-profit organization funded by the manufacturers.

It's up to the individual manufacturer to make sure their color meets the standard. Manufacturers such as Whirlpool always do.

[mm]

Thanks. I've posted on Craig's list, and this week I will call some appliance vendors and remodelers (who might be taking out the stove I want when they put in a new one. A remodeler from New Jersey who I met on line says he sees them often.)

[RicodJour]

But it's kind of unlikely that the refrig and the stove will be side by side, right? So there probably is a bit of a fudge factor allowance.

Not sure if it will work for you, but you could bring home a bunch of paint color chips in the right harvest gold range from the Borg, match it up to your refrig and make a note of the paint number, then mail that and a few other nearby color chips to the guy to match up. Don't just mail one as the guy might say close enough when it's not.

That might or might not make sense depending on how close a paint store or Borg is to you, and what "an hour or two away" really means in a round trip time. I'd figure it would shoot half a day going and checking the thing out.

R

[Mark Lloyd]

[snip]

Yellow too easily turns into brown. I have a bedroom that was painted #2 yellow before I bought the house.

[krw]

When the tile tub surround failed (glued to sheetrock) it was almost impossible to find a tile that looked decent with the yellow fixtures. What we found was one of the most expensive (Spanish) tiles the tile store "carried". It was expensive enough that they didn't stock it.

[mm]

People who do any work on their house should buy and save extra materials. Carpet, wall tile, floor tile, garden tile, linoleum, molding, etc.

When I bought my house, four years old, the owner gave me the receipts for the original carpeting and kitchen vinyl linoleum. I went there and talkd to the manager. She said when they leave scraps behind, the housewives call up and complain, so they don't, she said. I think the stores should explain to people that they need to buy extra.

They still had, and I bought a piece of linoleum about 2 feet by 8 feet. I never used it, but I might have and it was still worth the money. They didn't have the same carpet anymore.

Even the guy I bought the house from said he shoudl have saved the scraps He spilled paint in the middle of the master bedroom, and he said he had to cut out a 6x6" piece and the only carpet to replace it was in a closet. Now the place has only 4 carpeted closets, and they were all empty and I saw no carpet missing!! Maybe he cleaned it enough that I didn't notice before I put things in there. I'll try to remember to look when I'm an old man and I move out. (Hmmm. That would be one advantage to not dying in bed here, but it woudln't make up for the effort it takes to move.)

[mkirsch1]

No.

The color will vary from manufacturer to manufacturer. It will vary from paint batch to paint batch. Age and exposure to sunlight will cause different levels of fading.

When my parents did the first kitchen remodel in the late 1970's, Mom wanted harvest gold. They painted the existing cabinets harvest gold. They installed several new cabinets. They bought a harvest gold range. They bought a harvest gold free-standing cabinet for the phone. All were slightly different hues, but it looked better than what was there before.

[krw]

Sure. That wouldn't have helped in this situation, though. The entire wall was shot.

When we sold our last house I left spare tile for all but one bathroom (same as the others but a different lot) and a few boxes of bamboo flooring. They insisted I remove the carpet scraps (a few yards). Oh, well.

They never will. It varies so much. Tile is another thing that's impossible to match. I bought some stuff that was close when we sold our first house to repair the kitchen floor. I moved some loose stuff from under the fridge to the center of the floor.

I dumped a gallon of BIN on the (red) bedroom carpet once. I got enough of it up that it didn't look too bad. If you looked closely the backing was white, though. What a PITA. We replaced all of the carpeting in the house before we sold.