Gas Ranges

[JaneDoe]

We are researching gas ranges. In our old house, we had a gas range and loved it. We now have a Maytag electric smooth top free standing range. We are not so happy with it. It is only two years old and the oven element died a week after the one-year warranty expired. Fortunately, after talking to Maytag, they agreed to fix at no cost to us. However, this week one of the stove top elements just died. :banghead: It will cost about $400 or so to fix it.

The financial geniuses, that we are, have decided that instead of spending $400 to repair it, we would rather spend $2500 or so to get exactly what we want: a gas range. It is not terribly expensive to run a gas line to accomodate the new range, like $300 or so.

What are your opinions or free standing ranges? (I love the look of a slide-in, but we would have to do additional work for that, such as adding a back splash, etc.) I have my eyes set on this one:

We like the idea of a convection oven. Dh (not me) loves to bake. What do you think of the double oven? It seems like it would be great for large gatherings, like when the whole fam is over for the holidays.

Re: Gas Ranges

I don't blame you one bit. I think the double oven is great as long as it doesn't infringe on the space, height-wise, in the lower oven. I'm shopping for an oven and bring a cookie sheet with me. I want to see how well they fit and use it to compare one oven to another.

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I'd love to have a double oven - seems very convenient, as long as your pans fit.

I don't know much about ranges. We've always had electric until now. The house we're renting has a gas stove, and I'm learning to really like it. There's nothing to cool down afterward, and it's faster when changing the heat level. Ours sits in the kitchen island, which is a few feet wider than the stove (so instead of a backsplash behind it, there's just an extra few feet of tile counter). All I can say is, after frying pancakes on both gas & electric ranges, my results were far better on the gas one.

[Cumberland]

Re: Gas Ranges

When we renovated our last house we put in a double convection oven and converted from electric to gas.

I think the double oven question is a personal one- I used it occasionally but not enough to justify the cost. Holidays and big baking days it was awesome. The ovens were convection as well- DH used it a lot, I never really remembered, and the difference was not significant.

Now the gas stove on the other hand. I adored it, it was worth every expensive penny. If you like to cook, I think it is definitely worth it.


We got the appliances we did for resale purposes, and I cant say if it helped or not in the horrible market, but I was glad to have them for a year or two.

Re: Gas Ranges

I much prefer gas cooktops to conventional electric.....but.....have you considered induction? OMG....induction cooking is FABULOUS!!! After seeing what our friend's range could do, DH (who couldn't care less about kitchen appliances) wanted to buy one right away. With induction, a pot of water can boil in less than a minute. The cooktop surface remains cool so messes can be wiped up easily.

Re: Gas Ranges

Makai, I have a question for you on that -- what do you think of the clean up? It sounds like it is easy. I had a "gas on ceramic" cooktop (w/ cast iron grates) and I HATED the glass part. It always streaked, I had to make sure not to get anything too sugary on it because that can pit the glass, etc. Maybe the coolness of induction top helps with that?

Re: Gas Ranges

Since the induction cooktop stays cool (well, it does get a little warm from the warmth of the pot), you can clean-up spills right away. With my friend's, I was able to put my hand on the heating element right after she took a pot of boiling water off of it and it was warm but not hot.

I have a smoothtop electric. If I spill anything on it, it burns right away and is a pain to get clean. If you spill something on an induction cooktop, it would be like spilling something on the counter since there is no heat. I'm so jealous of my friend's kitchen!!

Re: Gas Ranges

Good to know. Thanks!

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Oh, Nellie....one downside to induction is that you can only use pans that are the same size or smaller than the "burner"....so no square or rectangular pans.

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That is one of the minuses for me -- I would really like to have a griddle. I guess I could do an electric one. Also, I would prefer to have the ovens under the stove -- having a hard time with a plan that includes wall ovens. (hijack over )

[Flynn]

Re: Gas Ranges

We did a cooktop -- GE Monogram. I love it. We have four burners and a griddle in the middle. We've always had gas so I can't really compare.

We decided to do an oven and a warming drawer to shave a bit of cost instead of the double oven. For Thanksgiving we cooked everything in stages and then it went in the warming drawer. It worked out FINE. We've even warmed things up in there we prepared a day early.

I think the drawer was around 800 dollars -- MUCH less expensive than another oven. It's not for everyone but it works for us!

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I just don't have a good chunk of space for wall ovens or wall oven/warming drawer without sacrificing counter space. I can't make it work, from a space planning perspective, without moving an exterior wall. I also think the look of a range is a better fit for how I want the kitchen to look, but that is secondary. From what I have priced out, separating the cooktop from the oven tends to be less expensive than a range (in some cases, especially wider than 4 burner ranges).

[Vishenka69]

Re: Gas Ranges

I can't wait to go back to gas, electric sucks (it could just be my stove but I hate my mom's electric too). I like the picture posted in original post but would check it in the store to make sure that if you put a 12" pan on one of the burners you can fit something else next to it. If I'm going to spend that much on a stove, I want to be able to use more than one or two burners at a time.