GE Double wall oven opinions... calling all range & oven mavens -Sandy, Hans, others?

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firedome

firedome

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These look like the ones that my folks had (in Avocado - yuk!) ca. 1968. All around they were very nice to use. I'm in contact about possibly buying these as we need eye-level cooking and want Coppertone. Are there opinions as to which GEs or Frigidaires or? that might be a best choice for built-in double wall ovens for use as DDs? Parts for these GEs seem fairly plentiful. Can anyone tell if these are P-7 units? Self cleaning is mandatory at this point, but it's hard to see any details here, and my knowledge of these is less-than-great. Don't know how to transfer pics from CL but here's the link:

http://detroit.craigslist.org/okl/app/4657773221.html
 
just guessing here:

because I can't see it well in detail: double oven JK-29 (TOL - both ovens P-7) or JK-22 (upper oven only P-7) and cooktop JP-76? That'd be if they are 1968s, not sure if the model #s changed with changing years?
 
Whatcha Want....

Is a GE JK-29, the late-'60s/early '70s TOL double oven. In this model (and no other GE of the time) both ovens are P*7 self-cleaning. Both are controlled by the same timer.

This model was the "gold standard" for serious cooks of the time; they were heavily insulated, beautifully engineered and fantastically even bakers.

Christina hippiedoll has the Coppertone version you're hoping for; perhaps she can post a photo or two for drooling purposes. Below is a photo of an Avocado JK-29 originally posted here with a CL ad by Phil ovrphil.

As you look for GE double ovens, here are the details unique to a JK-29:

1) Chrome trim around the doors.
2) Heavy chrome trim around the windows (other GEs had just a thin strip)
3) TWO oven door latches - one for each P*7 oven door.
4) Electric meat thermometer and rotisserie (both features depend on parts that are often missing from surviving units, i.e., a temperature probe for the meat thermometer and a bracket and skewer that are used with the broiling pan for rotissing).

You will not be sorry you got a JK-29, even if it has some "teething troubles" and you have to do some repairs before everything's hunky-dory. If you should have problems, remember that John combo52 is The Source for GE parts and service tips.

Bonne chance!

danemodsandy++10-5-2014-19-03-39.jpg
 
Hans:

Did Frigidaire make a unit comparable to the JK-29?

I'm only aware of Electri-Clean wall ovens with one self-cleaning oven, and without windows in the oven doors.

Have I missed something?
 
We had this exact same oven in our last home which was built in 1969. In fact ours were installed in the same exact way as the Coppertone ovens are displayed in the Craigslist advert.

Now our ovens had an external vent pipe that ran through the cabinet above the oven and through the attic out onto the roof. Towards the end of the self clean cycle a fan turns on and blows all the smoke out this vent. No smoke in the house during cleaning at all. The doors with windows have metal shields that ride up to cover the glass during the self clean cycle. If you don't pull up the shields, the self clean feature won't start. And you should remove the racks while the oven is cleaning otherwise they will discolor. But nothing beats the cleaning ability of a P7. They'll clean anything! If the oven is mildly dirty run the self clean for 2 hours. If it's really filthy run it for 3 hours. And these ovens don't heat the kitchen up that much during a self clean cycle. They are very well insulated.

As far as use goes, these ovens hold their temperatures very evenly with very little fluctuation in temperature. They are build very solidly as well. Nothing cheap about these! If we had the room in this house, we'd find an oven like this and install one again!
 
Re Frigidaire..

I never saw one with a window, only non self clean...not to say they didnt make them,I dont think they made a double self clean oven,the Frigidaires self cleaners do a good job though.they are all made for a 24 inch cabinet...not the wider style of the GE.
 
GE Double Self-Cleaning Ovens

These are excellent ovens these is is no argument about that. The first versions [ 1966-68 ] had more oven control problems than the next generation control systems did, so they are more difficult to keep working today. Around 1969 they started using a little solid state circuit board in the oven temperature control system and while we did not see a lot of problems with this system the CB is NLA so you should grab some spares if you are building this into your kitchen.

The FDs and GEs are about the same size overall in oven capacity, the FD is much deeper and taller inside, the GE a little wider. Both clean and bake great, the control system on the GEs is more versatile and the GEs are much easier to keep working if you are going to use these much.

Allen it sounds like you are describing a Thermador wall oven when you are talking about yours being vented as only TD ever vented an electric SC wall oven. On TD the vent system is turned on as soon as you start a SC cycle [ 90% of all the smoke and odor is created in the first 30-45 minutes of a SC cycle not near the end ] GE never made wall ovens that vented outdoors. Both GE and FD [ and most other companies ] recommended that you clean the ovens racks in the oven during the cleaning process.

The other wall ovens that should not be overlooked are the SC TD ovens, even though TD ovens had a few more service issues than GE I still think they are about the best built and PREFORMING ovens ever, when you consider the wonderful built-in exhaust system and the gasket-less doors and the 6 pass broilers with reflectors you can not beat their performance.
 
Thanks for that info, all...

am talking to the CL seller about them at this point, we shall see. Another very kind AW.o member has even offered to pick them up for me.

The ones in the CL ad that I linked to look to have the heavy chrome and the non-woodlook handles, so I'm guessing it is an earlier version. Seller says both ovens are P-7 so it's a JK-29 of some ilk. My folks had the '68 version in Avocado exactly as Sandy has shown, as mentioned, and even 30 yrs. after they sold that house I remember how nicely it baked, cooked and cleaned... even a horribly filthy post-Thanksgiving oven would leave just a wisp of ash in the bottom after the P-7s cleaning cycle. I liked it enough that I bought a new Coppertone GE 30" drop-in range for our 1st house around the time that they moved from NC to PA in '75.

Due to the inherent goodness and parts availability, a JK-29 looks like the right double oven for our retirement (and last?) house, and well worth the effort to deal with any problems that crop up due to age. If only GE still made stuff like this... IMO, they don't, but at least we still have the originals.
 
Nope, I am positive ours were P7's. It had a vent that came off the top of the oven at the back of the top. It looked like a rigid dryer duct. And the fan didn't come on until near the end of the SC cycle. The duct work had to be for the ovens as there was nothing else nearby that would need it. The vent hood for the range was on the other side of the kitchen. Maybe the builder fabricated something? It could be that he may have just added the vent pipe to the box the oven was sitting in? I never did see where the vent actually connected to the oven because that part was buried in the cabinet. You just opened the upper cabinet door and at the rear of that opening was the vent pipe.

I wish I had a photo of it. I wasn't much into stoves/ovens then and I distinctly remember the P7 logo on the control panel.

The house it came out of was a very upscale home complete with custom kitchen. We did clean the racks in the oven one time and they came out like aluminum pans do when washed in non phosphated DW detergent. Since we didn't buy the house new, the racks may have been cheap replacements?

Our ovens were installed exactly like the ones in the photo below. Right up against the door jamb going into the dining room. God, what we would do to have a kitchen that size again. 30' x 16'. Twenty full cabinets for storage. And we had every one of them filled with kitchen stuff.

whirlcool-2014100612013604435_1.jpg
 
Allen:

I wonder if what you could be remembering is an oven vent hood? Some manufacturers made them for wall ovens. They were installed directly over the oven (or upper oven for double-oven units), necessitating a somewhat taller cut-out for the installation.

My 1971 and 1972 GE catalogues do not show such a unit, but then these catalogues were not complete - no 40-inch ranges were shown in them at all, for instance.

I also have a photo of an early JK-29 from 1966, installed in the Fairfield, CT home of Mr. and Mrs. Richard Rodgers (The Sound of Music, etc.). That unit is like the Avocado one shown above, but is too early to have windowed doors. Above it is an oven vent hood. It is somewhat box-like, in stainless to match the oven doors. It might - or might not - be a GE accessory; the Rodgers kitchen was a mind-bogglingly extravagant St. Charles installation with many, many custom features seldom seen even in very high-end designs of the time.

Oven vent hoods were very useful for venting heat, humidity and cooking smells out of the kitchen. They generally had a front that you tilted out and up for use, forming a "hood," then pushed back in when done.
 
No vent hood, our installation looked exactly like the one I have shown here with the coppertone P7's with a cabinet above and below. The only difference was that our oven doors were Avocado. The cabinets we had were similar to the ones in the photo, but a little more upscale than the ones shown.
 
Like nearly everyone has mentioned, these are the "best of the best". While I've never had one, I've known many who have had GE wall ovens (both standard and the P*7 versions), and they all have liked them. They hold up well; the house across the street has one that was installed in '65, and a house up the street has one of the first GE built-in ovens from 1954, both still working.
 
GE Double Self-Cleaning Ovens

Hi Allen, my only guess as to why your home had a GE P-7 wall oven with a vent pipe in the cabinet above was that the kitchen was built with a Thermador oven in mind, so the builder of these high-end homes was just planning ahead, but I guess we will never know.

GE NEVER built a SC Wall Oven that could be connected to a vent system and even the vent hoods that Sandy talked about were not very useful with GEs SC WOs because the cooling fan that runs during the SC cycle blows the heat and smoke straight out into the room so the exhaust vent system doesn't capture much heat or smoke.
 
Thanks for the updates on the P7 ovens. We were the second owners of the house. We bought it in 1986. We never met the original owners of the house. By the time we bought it they had already moved to Hawaii. We did get a good price on the house because they were "motivated" to sell.

The house had a complete GE kitchen, from the P7 Ovens to the GE Cooktop (same as pictured in the P7 ad), GE Dishwasher (that lasted til 1991) and GE SxS Refrigerator.

Anyway, if anyone comes across a good used P7 oven, buy it! They really are great.
 
Buy the Book:

I don't have digital versions of the photos, only printed, BUT -

Mrs. Rodgers, who commissioned and designed much of the Fairfield house in 1965, wrote a best-selling book about the process of creating it, titled The House in My Head (Atheneum, New York, 1967). House Beautiful did a major spread on it, as well.

Used copies of the book abound on eBay, cheap. Since Dorothy Rodgers was a very accomplished cook, there is a recipe section in back with some damn fine eating in it.

The house is still there, but the kitchen is gone, and much has been changed, none of it for the better. It's on Congress Street.
 
Davey:

Here is one photo I do have in digital form, showing part of the Rodgers house.

Note the KitchenAid KDS-15 Superba VariCycle dishwasher. Note the double drainboard Elkay sink. Note the Sub-Zero refrigerator. Note all the St. Charles C-Line cabinets.

Now - note that this is NOT the actual kitchen. This is the butler's pantry off the dining area.

That should give you an idea how elaborate the house was.

danemodsandy++10-8-2014-13-12-52.jpg
 
I saw a few pictures online, very east coast Hollywood Regency, tasteful modern mansard. Reminded me of a popularized version of Saarinen's house for the head of Cummins in Columbus Indiana.
 
Davey:

Not as popularized as all that. Dorothy was a world-class art collector, and so the Fairfield house contained some pretty eye-popping stuff. The chimney breast of the living room sported a major Picasso; the one in her bedroom bore a very nice Dufy. Outdoors on a wall by the pool, a cast of one of Giocomo Manzu's door handles for St. Paul's made a terrific wall sculpture. Other works by Victor Passmore, Judy Brown, Zao-Wou-Ki and Graham Sutherland ware also present.

That was just the Fairfield place; the Rodgerses' New York apartment had a Rembrandt, a Renoir, a Toulouse-Lautrec, a Degas, a Jackson Pollock and a whole lot more.

You could not re-assemble the Rodgers art collection today if you were Bill Gates. Maybe the Sultan of Brunei. [this post was last edited: 10/9/2014-07:34]
 
I was talking about the general decor and aesthetic rather than the specific provenance of the items themselves.
 
Roger:

I was surprised at your assertion about Gates, so I Googled and found - you're right! In fact, Gates now slightly outranks Carlos Slim Helu as the world's richest man.

Just think what Gates could be worth if he made a stable, bug-free, hacker-resistant product....
 

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