I have a 24" oven and a 30" range. I almost always use the 24". It heats faster (and it's higher--not your case!). I use the big oven for Thanksgiving/holiday entertaining and cookies.

I like my tiny oven. I would find it inconvenient a few times a year to not have the big one, though. I have cooked a turkey on the grill, though, so I'd probably manage just fine.

I would mostly worry about resale--except in an apartment/condo setup, most folks will find it unacceptable (because they think of it as an apartment/condo thing).

Have you considered an induction range? The entire cooking area is a landing spot!

I have a 24 inch Bluestar range. It's oven is quite large. At the time I looked at Viking and it had a much smaller oven. The other all gas range in 24" that has a nice large oven is American - they have a 24" model called the Heritage with sealed burners on top. My neighbor has one and she loves it.

American also makes open burner on top, but I don't think they offer them in the 24" range yet.

Just my 2 cents, but I would go with Bluestar or American Residential ranges.

For twenty years I've used a 24" wall oven and a cook top successfully. Even through holidays and parties. When I remodel, I will be changing to a range. I'm glad you've posted this thread, Eleena. People are in more of an energy conservative mindset. That said, I'm planning on a 30 or 36" range for various reasons.. Glad to hear the Bluestar 24" is nice and large, alexr.

24" is a great size. Your first post has rebutted the inevitable objections.

No, it hasn't. I have a 24" oven and it is the worst piece of crap in my entire house.

It's OK for roasting a chicken. Roasting a turkey means the turkey is small, and not one other single item can go into it. It's all bird.

Baking results are beyond terrible. Many pans don't fit, but that's the least of it. Everything, absolutely everything, bakes unevenly. Cookies are burned on the bottom and raw on top. Same with pies, similar with cakes, though those are marginally less wretched, except for flourless chocolate cakes.

I think the reason is this: Unless you use doll-sized baking ware, normal things like cookie sheets completely block off the flow of hot air. So the bottom of the oven is much hotter than the top.

Yes, of course I double pan, wrap with foil, triple rotate and do everything I can to keep what I bake out of the garbage. Not always successfully.

A key point to mention is that this is non-convection. I assume forced air movement would ameliorate some of these atrocities. It's also gas, if that matters, and a GE, too. It's only a couple of years old.

Virtually every recipe that this oven ruins came out beautifully in the electric Frigidaire in my old apartment.

If you decide to get such a small oven as your only oven, be aware that the oven size was specifically pointed out by the realtor as a flaw.

For me, 24" would be too small, especially since it seems as if newer ovens have less interior capacity as older ones of the same size. Heck, even one 30" oven wasn't enough for me, but I realize its what most people have.

I would have a difficult time thinking of buying a house with an oven that small unless the whole room was ripe for ripping out and starting new, and was priced accordingly. Your RE market may be different, but that wouldn't fly in mine.

If we're talking about gas ranges, and not wall ovens....

I use a baking sheet for cookies that is 20" by 16" in my Bluestar 24 inch range. That's a pretty big cookie sheet- I also use half size jelly roll pan (18"x13") that fits in the oven in either direction.

The oven is 15 inches in height and a bit over 20" wide and 20" deep. Some of the depth is taken up by a convection fan housing (cover) on the back wall, so the oven racks are about 20" wide x 17 1/2+" deep.

I'm suggesting it's much larger than most 24" wall ovens. So roasting a turkey isn't a problem. In fact it has more head room than any C.C. range of any size.

It's got the same size infrared broiler as the larger Bluestar ranges, and the same 30K BTU oven burner. Also the same top burners. What's not to love?

I have a big 8qt Staub French oven - though it's not my widest pan, it's the biggest chuck of iron I own and it fits with plenty of room to reach in and grab, even if you didn't have rolling racks. And there's room for it to fit on several rack positions.

And I bake bread as well as cookies and I don't have to rotate with either - the heat is even- with or without the convection fan on.

I also looked up the dimensions of the 'American Residential', "Heritage" 24 inch gas range and it is about 1/2" larger in all dimensions.

I have no experience with the small oven issue, but I do wish that I had selected a 30" rather than 36" cooktop. I believe that landing space can be an issue and I wish that I had the extra 6 inches. Of course, I might miss the extra manipulation room on the cooktop. I think that the induction landing space is a good thought, but I suspect that it would still feel better to be landing stuff on the counter rather than the cook surface.

Oh, I forgot to mention that I was going to get (only) a Blue Star. Well, maybe, a Wolf, if I go with 30".

The 30" electric wall oven that came with the house broke ~5 years ago and the microwave on top of it broke even earlier. The new oven-MW or oven-oven combos on the market did not fit the opening in height and I had a countertop Delonghi convection oven, so I decided not replace them till the full kitchen remodel.

Believe it or not, I have adjusted to doing all my baking in the countertop oven (even though it is only 14" wide inside) by making several smaller batches. Plus, I have hardly had any time to cook. :-( Oh, and I also have two bread machines.

As you can guess, a 24" oven would be a huge "upgrade" for me at this point, LOL. Obviously, I have not been roasting a whole turkey all this time, but the "turkey size" is not a concern for me. Holiday or not, it is not something I am going to do - ever - unless it is a very small young turkey.

The current gas cooktop is 30" with only 24" actual "cooking" area as it has controls on the right. I hate having only 15" landing area on each side. For my next house, it'll have to be at least 18". :-)

I am stuck with the size of this cooking area (too long to explain), so I am just putting an additional induction top on the peninsula (keeping my fingers crossed as I have not asked my GC about putting a 240V outlet there). I actually like having two cooking areas, for the same reason people want two sinks.

Re-sale is the only concern. However, as the cooking area is an "isolated" unit, I can rip it out later and put a cheaper 30" range. We are not likely to move in the next 15 years, so the appliances will have to be updated anyway at that time. Plus, I will be - most likely - getting a 30" electric wall oven anyway. It's just seems silly to me to spend $5K on something I'll be using once a year...

Thank you for your thoughts! It was very helpful for me to understand the pro's and con's.

"Have you considered an induction range? The entire cooking area is a landing spot!"

Oh, yes! I am sort of clumsy and DH isn't careful either, so I am not going to take my chances landing a cast iron Dutch oven on a $$$$ glass induction top, LOL, so I am putting it elsewhere.

I'd be more concerned with the 24" cooktop than the oven itself. As on most ranges, you can't place two standard 12" skillets front and back because they'll be way off center of the burners. Setting them diagonally gets you close to centered, but at this point on a 24" layout you've pretty much rendered the remaining two burners unusable except perhaps for some very small pots. Am I correct? Perhaps alexr can speak to this.

(Somewhere in the course of editing my above post I accidentally dropped "If I'm envisioning this right..." - just want to be clear I was speaking on assumption not exerience!)

Yes, that is the problem with the 24" cooktops. We have just discussed it on my "useless burners" thread. But, according to products specs, the ranges shouldn't have this problem as they have controls on the front panel instead of the top. They are also "deeper" (28" vs. 20"). I have to go to a showroom to check it though.

Truth be told, our double ovens were both 24" when we bought, the bottom worked but not the top. We always talked about fixing this when we upgraded the kitchen. In the interim, my spouse cooked eighteen Thanksgivings of 16 pound plus organic turkeys. Our Thermador was an oldie but goodie. We used the cooktop to do the rest and I baked the pies early the holiday mornings before the turkey.

Now that we're contemplating the upgraded kitchen, we're thinking of a Pro 30" or 36" range, maybe with a convection microwave replacing the tall double oven cabinet.

Eleena, any Bluestar would make most mouths water, and alexr, as you noted, describes how much can be fit in the 24". The 24" aesthetically is very pleasing to the eye too, imho.;)

We replaced a 24" oven with a 24" kitchenaid double oven when we moved in 12 years ago. When researching ovens we found that the interior dimensions varied considerably. The kitchen aid was one of the larger ones. We had no problems with uneven baking or lack of room. 15lb turkey fit just fine. A 20 plus lb turkey would not have fit. The second oven took care of potatoes, casseroles, etc.
Two years ago we remodeled and replaced the cabinets and the oven. The biggest oven I could squeeze in was a 27" Fridgedaire double convection. The oven interior was only 1 1/2" bigger than the old 24" Kitchenaid. Sorry, I don't recall the exact numbers.
I guess the point is you should be comparing interior dimensions, not just 24" vs 30".

The Kitchen aid model I bought and most of the other models I was comparing it to are not made any more. some brands will publish interior dimensions on the web, some don't. You'll have to go to the store with a tape measure.

Does anyone have pics of there Kitchen's with 24 inch stoves.
We have wanted to update our kitchen for years. We go back and forth with keeping the 24 inch stove or having to replace the cupboards. Thanks

> I'd be more concerned with the 24" cooktop than the oven itself. As on most ranges, you can't place two standard 12" skillets front and back because they'll be way off center of the burners. Setting them diagonally gets you close to centered, but at this point on a 24" layout you've pretty much rendered the remaining two burners unusable except perhaps for some very small pots. Am I correct?

> Yes, that is the problem with the 24" cooktops.

Oh, really? Here is a 24" cooktop:

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Here is what most 30" cooktops look like:

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Please note that the actual burner size and spread is nearly identical on both cooktops. The extra 6" or 7" on the 30" cooktop is used almost entirely for the knobs.

There are other burner layouts, and not all 24" cooktops are as space-efficient, and some 30" cooktops make better use of space (i.e. small controls on the front center, a design I've seen on smaller and larger sizes too). But let's put to rest any notion that 24" cooktops or stove tops don't have enough room for your cookware to spread out.

I rent and recently my old 27" oven was replaced by the nasty handyman with a 24". I could kill him. A normal cookie sheet will not fit in it properly. That would be the standard half sheet pan. They don't have a size that fits in it except for small ones, which means it takes forever to make multiple batches of cookies. Those sheet pans are also great for roasting vegs, but the smaller ones come only in nonstick and roasting vegs on them ruins the finish. You CAN get a 27" oven, and it fits in almost the identical space as a 24". Mine is huge on the outside, small on the inside. As I said, want to KILL him. So if you actually cook, want to make a holiday meal or even just have a few people over, you might as well toss that 24" oven unless all you make is small casseroles. I really cook and hate that oven so much I rarely am in the mood to bake. If I were any thinner maybe I'd be less homicidal. If you go to Homedepot.com they will show you pictures of ovens with the same size pans in all, and you'll see what I mean. A 24" holds a bread pan and a small lasagna pan. A 27" holds 2 quarter sheet pans on the same shelf and a lasagna pan or more. It's the minimum size oven anyone baking with American bakeware should buy.