thanks for the KDS-14 photo
My mother gutted the kitchen of our 1930's-era house in San Diego within a month of moving in, in late 1961. While a heavy duty white gas range was tossed out, the overall result was a state of the art 1961 kitchen with maple cabinets, white Formica (door hardware pulls matched the counters...), SS electric cooktop and double wall oven by Frigidaire, an enclosure for the GE fridge, and the piece de resistance, a brand new built in KA KDS-14, 1961 or 62 model (I can't remember if she finished the remodel by the end of 61 or not, but the project didn't seem to take too long, I only remember a few weeks of fast food and cooking on a hot plate in the laundry room...next to the 1958 GE Filter Flo and matching gas dryer, of course...and no I don't think Mom ever bought the Air Freshener tablets).
I remember the control panel of the KA perfectly, and we only used Rinse-Hold and Normal cycles. NEVER the Utility cycle, probably because my mother wasn't into reading manuals, and since she didn't know what the Utility button did, no one ever pushed it. In the 10 additional years we lived in that house, I don't think anyone EVER used the Utility cycle.
Anyway, the one thing I cannot recall is the color of the front panel. The surviving photos of the kitchen don't show the KA, they were taken from the KA side of the room and show the oven and fridge. Does anyone know if KAs were adaptable to custom wood panels in the early 1960s? I sort of seem to remember a panel that matched the cabinets, but I can't remember if it was actually wood, or maybe brown metal that came close to matching the cabinets. The front was definitely not stainless steel.
