How tall are you? I have seen posts here of people who have chosen to lower their baking area to make it easier on the back.

Depends on how tall your uppers are. If you reduce the space between the counter and the uppers it's not a good thing. If you have room to move the uppers up or go with a shorter upper cab you'll be o.k.

Raising a counter is not usually the solution for rolling out dough - usually it's recmmended to lower the work surface so you can lean down and put the weight of your upper body onto the dough to ease the work.

I think your KD is confused. Of course I have no idea how tall you are, but unless you're 6 feet plus, 39" sounds too high to me.

But you can work this out easily for yourself.

Working with your current counter, lay various thicknesses of boards flat on the floor in an area in front of where you work. This will functionally lower the height of the counter relative to your body. Start with simple 1 inch thick boards. Then add more boards in graduated steps, up to about 3" thick. If any of this is making a difference you'll know pretty quickly.

You can also try to raise the counter top by adding stacked work surfaces on top of the present counter. To keep things from sliding about lay a layer of that squishy rubbery mesh grid used for lining shelves underneath the layers. It comes in rolls at a store like HD or Lowes. You don't need much, nor do you need 100% coverage of the layers, just enough to keep it from sliding.

While you're at it, consider other atypical work surface heights including your burner-level height, the depth of the bottom of your sink and the height of you main prep/chopping surface.

While some people point out that a highly customized counter heights may be an issue on resale, that may or may not actually be a problem. It kind of depends of your market.

For my family we have carefully investigated this for both cooks and figured out which heights work best, and how to adapt to contradictary needs. One thing we plan on using is pull-out (well kick and release, actually) platforms that can be pulled out from the toe kick area to change the relative height to adjust for the short user. In contrast for the much-taller user who needs higher surface for chopping during prep we will simply add an extra thick butcher block cutting board that lives in slot just below the prep area.

One thing we both found useful was raising the counter at the cleaning zone about 3.5" and thus raising the floor of the sink higher than is typical. (And we don't have one of the extra-deep sinks, just a normal 7.5' deep.) It's amazing how much of a difference it makes when handwashing, which is all we do.

HTH

L.

Thanks everyone. I'm 5'9". My back aches chopping and rolling out dough at the standard counter height.

That's a good idea to try and raise it up with boards and see how it helps.

These are custom cabinets so he can adjust the uppers to ensure I keep the 18" between the upper and lowers no matter what. Right now the plan is 42" uppers that go to the ceiling, so I think I have enough wiggle room.

I'm a firm believer in creating the space that YOU want and will use, but if you need to be concerned about resale value, I urge you to consider some kind of option that could be reversed without ripping everything out. I'm a bit on the vertically challenged side and I would have to redo a kitchen with counters that high.

You will have a gap at the top of your DW if you raise your counters on a sink run. And your range will be below the recommended height, which is a safety hazard. It can NOT be below the counters. Appliances are all made to work with standardized appliances. It's a system. You can deal with the DW by doing a trim piece across the top, but you don't want to raise up a range on a platform as it's a safety hazard to slide something heavy in and out and off of a platform like that. You would need to switch to a wall oven and cooktop. And that will increase the cost of your appliance budget and the cabinet budget as well.

Most people who opt for a non standard counter height do it on an island or peninsula in order to not affect the appliances, and in order to maximize the resale issue. Higher than normal counters for everything can affect the resale down the road.

I am also 5'9" and we just had our counters raised last week. DH is 6'5". We went up 2" from 36 to 38. LOVE it! We got around the appliances issue by having 2" shim blocks put under the slide-in stove and the DW. As Live Wire says, the DW could have also been done with a spacer above it, buy hey, now we don't have to bend down so far to load/unload it.

We had the uppers raised a similar amount, plus a little more so we had a net gain in the backsplash region. Of course this makes the top shelves slightly farther up but since we are tall that is no issue.

When I first walked in the kitchen I thought it looked weird, but the interesting thing has been how much the various contractors like it. They are all strapping guys and they unanimously like the new height. There is something natural and comfortable about it.

As for resale, we let that ship sale awhile back with this house. It started out as builder-basic but we have landscaped and remodeled it into something unique. Resale is nowhere on our road map, but when that time does come it won't appeal to everyone. We're OK with that.

It's a tough decision but well worth really thinking over. Good luck!

I am also 5ft 9in and love the 3 inches we raised our counters for chopping and most prep. I don't bake often but found it most comfortable to roll dough on the kitchen table with the lower ht. The only concern I have is with the range top. It is not very comfortable to saute and stir at the elevated level. My range top also sits 1 inch above the counter.

Thanks everyone...you've given me some good things to think about!!

I'm going to try and rig something to try out the height I'm considering and see what I think.