I have been lurking on this forum for a few months now, reading up on kitchen ranges, ovens, and cooktops in preparation for a major remodel of our kitchen. All the information has been incredibly helpful, but now I am at a bit of an impasse and need to actually ask a question. We hope to move our back door to get a bit more room in the kitchen (which is right now 10 x 13... with the back door moved, it will be more like 12 x 13). In this case, we will have room for a gas cooktop and double ovens or a 36 inch range. Plan A is to go with a 36 inch Thermador gas cooktop and Electrolux double ovens, which we can get for $5000 or under, total.

The problem comes if we aren't able to move the back door. Then we won't be able to fit the double ovens in the kitchen unless we obstruct the traffic flow. We have 8 kids (7 boys) and there is always a kid running through there. I live in terror of having a kid fall into the oven door because he's running and not paying attention when I've just opened the oven.

So I need to come up with a plan B. We rarely eat out, and I cook almost entirely from scratch 3 meals a day nearly 365 days a year for 10 people. Because we're gluten-free, I also make all our bread and baked goods from scratch... so a good, consistent, big oven is important to me. (I'd like to be able to triple a muffin recipe and bake it all at once.) I really need a workhorse range/oven... without skimping on the oven... that will take a lot of use and abuse and last for a long time. (And that is also relatively easy to clean.)

I've narrowed our Plan B down to a few options:

1. 30 inch GE Profile slide-in dual-fuel range. This is the cheapest option we're looking at, which may be a factor. The burner configuration would work for us, too. I also like the large oven capacity and the warming drawer, but I worry that a 30 inch cooktop is going to be too squeezy for the 15 inch skillets and giant pots I use routinely. We also weren't impressed with the quality of the stainless on the GE cooktops that we've looked at; I read a post here that mentioned they were always missing knobs, scratched, banged up in the stores, and sure enough, every one we looked at was like that, too.

2. 36 inch Thermador gas cooktop over a single Electrolux wall oven. That gets us the 36 inch cooktop, but only a 4.8 cu ft oven. Still, I liked the Electrolux ovens I saw in the showroom and I have heard good things about them on here. Sacrificing oven capacity would be disappointing to me, though, and all the electronics in the oven make me a little nervous. (This would also be a drawback to our Plan A as well.)

3. 36 inch Bluestar RCS series or 36 inch American Performer series. I have been reading all the Bluestar threads here, and I have to say the Bluestar appeals me for a few reasons, one being that it is a 36 inch range with a large oven, I also like that it doesn't have all the electronics. But -- we would have to travel over 3 hours to see one in person, and it might stretch our budget a little. There is an American dealer here in town, but it seems that there are some issues with the American's reliability vs. the Bluestar? I'm also wondering how hot the oven doors on these ranges actually get. My current oven door gets pretty warm, but you can still lay your hand flat against it and keep it there. With little ones running around, I don't want an oven door that gets so hot it could burn a toddler. That would be a deal-breaker for me, regardless of any other feature.

Any and all advice will be much appreciated, as I really have no idea which direction we should take. Thanks!

This post was edited by AngelB8 on Wed, Jan 21, 15 at 16:05