We have a 24" Miele speed oven with a 36" Blue Star range. I use the speed oven for most of my cooking. In particular, I am able to fit a half sheet pan in the Miele, so I can roast my vegetables there. I also can fit a large 12 x 17 roasting pan. I can even fit my 3 quart All Clad saute pan with the long handle! So the small oven is surprisingly large. And the multi-functionality is what makes it great.

Now that I have a 36" range, I could never go back to a 30". Using more than four burners at one time is hardly the point, in my view. It is the ability to spread out when I cook that is so nice. Unless you really need the extra cabinet space, I would go with the 36". With a family of 6, your cooking will only increase.

By the way, be sure that you are clear about the differences between a cooktop and a rangetop. They are not the same thing.

Thank you nycbluedevil, especially for providing measurement sizes. That is helpful.

I think I'm pretty clear on the difference between a cooktop and range. A range is oven and cooktop combined, or am I missing something?

Dawalli, what she said was be sure you know the difference between a cooktop and a rangetop, not a range. A cooktop sits on top of the counter with the controls on top as well. A rangetop sits on the counter, but the controls are on the front (where a drawer would often be). (Yes a range combines cooktop and oven).

A range is really a combo of a range top and an oven because the controls are in front not on top. A cooktop is really a different animal, as described above.

There are many threads here that compare the relative advantages and disadvantages of range tops and cooktops. And there are endless discussions about ranges versus wall ovens......

By coincidence I just got an email alert about a new Consumer Reports test where they found that the small Cuisenart counter-top steam oven worked beautifully. It is only the size of a toaster oven but has a water tank on the side that generates steam. It can speed up baking small items considerably. It bakes crusty bread. And it can proof dough. The only drawback was the small size. Can be purchased from Bed Bath and Beyond for about $300.. Maybe that is your best solution.

Thanks for the lesson on rangetops - I did not appreciate the distinction. Although I'm not sure I've ever seen an induction rangetop. I thought that only applied to gas, which we're definitely not interested in.

Nerdyshopper: I did see that and thought that could be a nice foray into steam cooking but hubby will laugh in my face if I suggest that as substitute for a second oven.

RE: the Cuisinart combi-steam oven. I have one (used a BB&B 20% off coupon to buy it a couple of months ago so we could see whether we liked steam oven cooking), and we use it almost every day. My husband really likes it for reheating his lunches, and I've been using it to steam vegetables mostly. I've done a couple of roast chickens, some loaves of bread (ATK gluten-free recipe and regular bread), biscuits, shrimp, fish, so much stuff. It's been fun playing with it. The recipe that was most fun to try was their clambake with various shellfish, potatoes, and corn on the cob. It turned out beautifully, and was almost too much for my 19yo son and I to finish, but we managed :). I can fit 1 lb of veggies on the pan, which is enough for us. We're pretty much empty-nesters now, well until May 9 when younger son comes home from college. So I'm not sure how useful this size oven would be for your family; I guess it depends on how you cook and/or how you use it. But our experience with the Cuisinart has certainly convinced me that we would use a built-in combi-steam oven, and that it might be worth the money for us. They are indeed a big chunk of change.

I'm afraid I'm no help with your other decisions as I am in the same boat, flip-flopping between range & rangetop-wall oven combo. We're not getting any younger, and I'm not sure how I'll like cooking in a range oven having had wall ovens for so long. The main reason I'm even considering a range is because hardly anyone makes gas wall ovens and we're pretty tied into gas.

Good luck with your decisions!

Imp, we are a single-oven household, and it's generally all we need. We always figured that if we need another oven, we'd get the. Breville toaster oven, but this Cuisinart is intriguing. Would you say it would be good as an "adjunct" oven - when I simply must have two?

sj, I can tell you the Cuisinart is a good adjunct oven for us. It's so small it won't even fit a quarter-size sheet pan, but it does fit a 9" cake pan, pie plate, 11 x 5 casserole dish. I've used it to keep food warm while I finish other dishes. I think we did small frozen pizzas in it too. It's even a good toaster although it's a pain cleaning up the crumbs from the toast. They get stuck in the rubber gasket on the door. I haven't figured a way to prevent crumbs from dropping on the door when I take the toast out. Oh, and I hadn't used convection before so that's been fun to experiment with. It's been worth the money for us, for sure. The main reason I'm wanting to go with a built-in combi-steam oven is so I can cook complete meals in it. I find myself keeping things warm in our wall oven while I cook the rest of the meal in the Cuisinart. I use it more than our regular oven, but that may be because our wall oven fan is noisy -- the Cuisinart is surprisingly quiet -- and the door is broken and the electronics are temperamental if I dare to set the temp above 350. Oh, and the Cuisinart doesn't use as much water as I thought it would. I think I ran out once when I was roasting chicken. It's a snap to refill. Sorry, more than you asked.

Thanks for the details (really)!

Not sure how much help this is, but I have always done just fine with a 30 inch range.

We are just a family of four though and while I cook regularly I do fairly simple meals. I never seriously considered going bigger, partly because we have always had small kitchens and partly because that size is kind of the sweet spot for good options at a price point that fits my budget. It's also virtually guaranteed to be easy to find affordable replacements into the indefinite future.

Honestly I can only really keep track of two things on the burners at a time anyway. So a bigger cooktop would be wasted on me. Maybe you are better at multi-tasking than I am though. :)

In the last kitchen I remodeled I put in a thirty inch gas range with two ovens, the bottom one was just a baking oven. Then I put in a wall Advantium. That gave me three ovens in a small amount of space at a price point I could afford. I found I used the Advantium a ton, mostly as a convection oven, mostly because I loved the countertop height I had it installed at. One full size oven was plenty for me and I could stick biscuits or whatever in the bottom baking oven and use the Advantium as a microwave or to cook a casserole or the like at a different temperature if necessary. We lived in that house for about 18 months and I only ever had all three ovens going at the same time once.

I do have induction in this kitchen and love it and would gladly choose it again.

I have a single oven, combi-steam and speed oven. I need all three and the warming drawer when I have sit down dinner for dozens. :) I also have a 30" induction cooktop and a 15" gas cooktop. I often have two large pots on the former and one on the latter on such occasions, but I rarely use more than three burners at once, if only because I'd rather stagger cooking and put something in the warming drawer.

Since you rarely use your second oven, I think you'd be fine with a single oven and a supplement. 24" ovens are not going anywhere. There are lots of smaller and smaller apartments being made. Lots of normal homes in Europe and Asia are the size of my front porch. Tiny Houses, mobile homes, and fancy motorhomes all might have them. And tiny apartments are also in cities like Manhattan and San Francisco, where there is literally a finite amount of space. 24" ovens will continue to be made for such places. Additionally, it stands to reason that they'd take less power, which is an additional reason to continue making them.

The number one thing I was getting for my new kitchen, no matter what, were the Gaggenau oven and combi-steam. The cooking devices, especially the ovens if you use ovens, make the biggest difference in one's cooking pleasure in a kitchen.

Whether you choose a 24" standard oven, a speed oven, a combi-steam oven (i.e., one that can act as a non-steam oven as well as steam), or a countertop oven, depends entirely on your personal requirements. Make sure it's big enough for those five times per year you use the second oven (I can fit my 8 qt. graniteware roaster in my combi-), and that the other, special, features are ones you'll enjoy. I use all three of my ovens for different things all the time. It's just that I only use them all at once every so often. :)

I wish I could help you more with the choice, but you seem well informed. The best thing to do is research everything in your price/space range and read through the manuals, imagining what you'd use them for, talk to people here and elsewhere about specific models, look at them in showrooms, and keep eliminating the ones that are the least good until you know what you want.

If you go with an induction range the choices are extremely limited. Electrolux makes one but I don't know of another. I would check on that first because then it's dominos.

Unless you adore the Elux range, you are at induction cooktop plus ovens.

With a family of 6, I would want a 36-inch cooktop. The size of that cooktop might as well be the biggest you can get because it doubles as a counter when not in use. No space loss there.

So then the issue becomes:

1 or 2 wall (30-inch) ovens plus either microwave, micro/convection, or steam combi.

I don't feel it's overbuilding to have a double oven plus a micro or micro/convection. People love their steam combis too -- hard to tell which would be more useful.

When I look back at what I would do if I did it again, I don't regret anything I did but do feel I held myself back too much and could have done more. But for each of us, the decision we make is what seems most logical/workable/reasonable at the time.

Don't know your DH but mine always wanted to push things further than I did. He won many battles about things I didn't think were necessary and those are some of the most successful things in our house.

I'd try to sit down and ask your DH why he's suggesting the double ovens and whether he wants to learn to use a micro/convection or micro/steam oven (the kids will figure it out).

It's a bit daunting to try to figure out exactly what would be perfect for a reno. Some know but often a spouse or a kid comes up with the right idea.

With a family of 6, I would want a 36-inch cooktop

I actually disagree with this - it isn't the number of people you're cooking for, it's the complexity of the meals. If I'm making a vegetable on the cooktop, whether its for 2-4 or 6 people, I just use different size pots, but still only one burner.

We are a family of 2 and I have a 36" cooktop. No reason not to have it and the extra facilities it provides IMHO. Mine happens to be radiant electric but it's a similar surface for induction. I often put small electrics on it -- the electric steamer, Breville grill and big griddle to operate under the hood. With a smaller cooktop the hood would be scaled down as well. Cannot see the harm in having the extra 6 inches, large hood and additional burner vs being more limited, particularly with growing kids in the house.

But the OP obviously needs to decide what's best for her.

crl_: I'm a bit like you - I burn or ruin something if I have too much going on. And I get easily distracted with all the kids running around. I did hear of some inductions that have timers and auto shut offs. I should probably put that on my MUST list to help narrow things down and save our dinners.

plllog: your kitchen sounds ideal to me! I only wish budget would allow for all three types of ovens. Could you please tell me if there are certain dishes you prefer to prepare in your speed oven vs steam oven? This may help me narrow things down.

rococogurl: good point about the ranges. Our DH's sound the same! He's often right, annoyingly so. Although his only reason for having a second oven is, "just in case we need it".

I think everyone has made valid points about the size of the cooktop and I've decided to go with the 36" size. Especially as at that size there is more functionality. Phew - one down! So now I just need to narrow down the ovens.

plllog: thank you so much for your detailed and informative post! Can I please come have dinner at yours one day? What a feast you described!

From your description and some videos I just watched on youtube, I think that the steam oven is the best choice for me. I just love the idea that I could do a whole dinner, with rice, in the steam oven. We eat a lot of rice. Anything that can make dinner time simpler and healthy is a plus for me.

I'm also thinking that with so much that can be done in the steam oven, I'll be using my cooktop even less, so I could still get away with a 30" range which would help with our budget. What I'll do for DH is tell him the steam oven is a must and then give him options for separate cooktop and convection oven vs 30" range and then he can decide how much money he wants to throw at it.

We are in this house indefinitely, so I do want to put in the best appliances possible. Thank you so much for taking the time to describe your own cooking experiences. I feel infinitely less stressed now!

I'm so glad to be helpful! And I think you have a great plan. My choice would be the same, assuming the range has a big double or triple element. Some 30" cooktops have four more similar sized single elements. You might not need the big one, though. Given that, if I had to choose range (and I'm not fond of ranges) and combi-steam oven, vs. separate oven and cooktop and no steam oven, I'd definitely choose the former.

Do check out the manuals and videos for the exact model steam oven you're looking at buying. Mine allows steam adjustment of 100%, 80%, 60%, 30% and 0. I use 100% and 60% the most, and hardly ever 80%. I think some models are just steam off or on. That's still good, but the adjustments are better. For instance, if I want to roast peewee potatoes, I put them on 30%, but they don't really need steam. I've heard that 30% is just not venting the steam from the food, but I hear the steam mechanism working, and don't know if it's that, or if there's just usually enough steam from the food that the oven doesn't need to produce a lot or what. I don't even know if there's some kind of hygrometer in there, or if the different steam levels are just preset quantities. I just know it works. :)

Re rice, I've only done it a couple of times, and wan't so successful with jasmine rice. I did a large amount of field ripened brown rice, however, which usually needs to be boiled, and which came out perfectly. I thought I had notes of how to, and it might be in some cookbook files I have, but the basic thing is put the rice in the pan with 2/3 the recommended amount of water.

I also had a recipe that a member here recommended for risotto dish in the combi-steam, which might be a great thing in a tiny apartment, to get a pot off the stove, but making it the old fashioned way by stirring in water or stock and bringing out the starch seemed so much easier! So I did that instead.

I don't use a lot of rice, however. I'm sure with a little trial and error, you'll figure it out.