So my husband went into the local appliance specialty store with his most common pots and pans (Staub grill pan, Chinese carbon steel wok, Le Creuset Dutch oven, and a pasta pot) and just did not like the DCS with its large burner in the center. He also looked at the Blue Star, Wolf, Dacor, Thermador, and Miele. Ultimately, based on the layout he needs and the specs (e.g., simmer, BTU, continuous grate), he chose the Miele with the contemporary (linear grates). Frankly, I think it's not as pretty, as it's a little industrial looking, but whatever. Husband is the one who does all the cooking. It should be delivered next week and I will try to report back in a month or so what our experience has been with it. Here is a link that might be useful: Miele KM3475G

What compromises are you willing to make? Is your budget for each item 2K per item, or is it 2K for both combined? What size vent pipe are you planning to install? The problem is that your budget is low for what you are asking about as a combo, even if your budget is 4K. Compromises will have to be made. A lower BTU cooktop coupled with a lower CFM fan that uses a only 6" vent can probably be found on your budget if you're willing to go Chinese on the hood and aren't that concerned about noise. (Looks not cooks compromise) Or, you could do the high BTU cooktop and compromise on a wimpy (but still expensive) vent above. (Cooks, but adds CLEANING a lot more as a compromise. Not recommended in my book.) But, to get both a high BTU cooktop and an effective island hood above it with the larger coverage, CFM and vent pipe, well, that will require a larger budget. (Cooks and looks) And we haven't even discussed the labor costs for installation. Or, you could explore moving the cooktop to a perimeter location. It's a lot cheaper for ventilation, and you get better quality ventilation because the wall helps to contain some of the cooking products and funnel them into the hood. Therefore, you can choose less CFM for a wall hood setup than an island hood setup.

I agree with Weissman that sometimes manufacturers call rangetops cooktops, but most of the time a "rangetop" means, well, how it sounds, like the top part of the range minus the oven, with the knobs on the front. Other differences - typically rangetops have each burner the same btu's, while cooktops have different btu's on different burners, and also sometimes different size/diameter burners. This is neither an advantage nor disadvantage; it's a matter of personal cooking style. Some people like a dedicated burner for e.g. simmering or e.g. high-power btu's. Other people like all the burners the same because they don't have to think about shifting pots around onto different burners depending on whether they want a high boil or low simmer. However, if all your burners are the same size and btu's, you better make sure you have a high-quality machine that will be able to simmer or high-power boil on each burner and do that regardless of what size pot/pan you have (Wolf rangetops come to mind). Another difference is aesthetics. People perceive the rangetop look as more "industrial kitchen", while the drop-in cooktop is sleeker. Again, no right or wrong choice, just a matter of taste. Space considerations - I would think that the rangetop will need more space in your cabinet height-wise. I.e. you may not be able to fit as many drawers under a rangetop as you would a drop-in cooktop.

Safe? Yes, as long as you are not using a regular plain slide-in kind of range. Note the 4" riser/vent at the back of Pirula's range. Any range that has at least a 4" high backsplash on it can go directly against the wall and will be fine from a code and safety standpoint. With your cooktop, it will be a little different. Some makers (such as Blue Star) require 6" of horizontal clearance for their units, but Miele is designed to require less. So, as long as you maintain the requisite 2.75" clearance for the Miele, there will not be a safety issue. Beyond that, I'm very much with akchicago on cleaning the thing. I speak from experience. A couple of decades ago, I had an old-house kitchen with beadboard backsplash. I'm a messy cook. I found it hard to maintain the beadboard without frequent touch-up on the paint. I never found a paint that was tough enough to hold up for any length of time. If you really like the look of the beadboard, I suppose you could consider overlaying it with a clear tempered glass panel. That would allow the beadboard pattern to show through and would be much easier to clean. (I've done something like this behind my stove in my current house, although my wall is just plain painted drywall, The tempered glass panel was inexpensive. The most expensive part was having holes drilled in the glass for the mounting screws.). This post was edited by JWVideo on Thu, Jan 22, 15 at 18:02