Not that range

When considering a range/stove/oven for a new house, you have two basic options: a stand-alone unit (oven+stove) or a built-in (wall) oven with a cooktop (installed on top of the countertop).

My primary home came with built-in oven/countertop combo, and, man, is it a pain! Actually, it is not a pain as long as it works. In fact, the nice part about the built-in oven/cooktop is that there are no gaps between the appliances and the counters, so you don't need to deal with cleaning up crumbles and other crap falling in the cracks. It looks nice and clean. The ugly part starts when something breaks.

When something in the wall oven/cooktop combo breaks, you have two problems. First, you need taking an appliance out. It's not too hard, but still it's more complicated than just moving a stand-alone range. Second, they are more expensive to replace. At the time of writing, a new slide-in range can be found for around $1,200 (and a free-standing range would be a few hundred cheaper, such as $700). That would be a total cost. With a wall oven/cooktop combo, you need to buy two appliances and the oven alone would cost more than the stand-alone range. Then you will need to spend about that much on a cooktop. So you'd be spending about twice as much. You will also have to deal with the installation issues because not all built-in ovens can work with cooktops (you will need to be extra careful to avoid buying incompatible units which will most likely raise your costs even higher). And when time comes for an upgrade, you may run into upgrade issues, just like I recently did.

Here is a story that may help you in case you run into a similar issue. After about 11 years of use and one repair, my wall oven (Whirlpool model: RBS307PVS) finally died. I suspected a bad controller board replacing which would cost over $600. Spending that much on repairing an 11-year-old appliance made no sense, so I decided to upgrade. Because the original model was discontinued, I bought another similarly priced unit from the same manufacturer (Whirlpool model: WOS31ES0JS01). I though replacing the oven would be easy-peasy, so imagine my surprise when I realized that the new oven was about an inch deeper than the old one making it impossible to push the oven all the way. No matter how hard I tried, there was about 3/4" deep gap that I could not close.

After asking for help on a number of sites and getting nowhere, I was finally able to get it fixed by removing the cooktop and moving the gas hose out of the way (if you are interested in details, check out my Reddit post). But it took a lot more time and effort than replacing a stand-alone range would.

Anyway, with a new slide-in range in my backyard house, I hope to avoid such problems. Will just need to take care of them crumbs.

P.S. While we're on the topic, in case you run into a similar dilemma, I want to mention that some appliance manufacturers have programs that promise to pay you up to a certain amount (e.g. Whirlpool allows up to $300) for retrofitting cabinets, but after submitting all required documents two weeks ago, I have not heard from them (at least one person responding to my post indicated that they got nothing from GE when dealing with a similar situation). So these "fit guarantee" programs sound more like a sham to me. Maybe you get be more lucky, but don't expect much, if anything.

P.P.S. Exactly one month after submitting a request for the Whirlpool's Fit Guarantee, I finally got a response:

"Thank you for contacting Whirlpool. I appreciate hearing from you. Your email is extremely important to us here at Whirlpool and we sincerely apologize for any delays in responding to your email. We are working diligently to respond over the telephone and through email to all of our customers. Congratulations on your new KitchenAid Wall Oven purchase. You are a valued customer and KitchenAid sincerely appreciates your business. This is an email confirmation notice that the Fit System Guarantee Form for your KitchenAid Wall Oven has arrived here at Whirlpool and has been attached to your personal account. To take advantage of this offer of up to $300 toward the cost of professionally modifying your cabinets to install your new refrigerator, we will need a copy of the dated invoice or receipt from a professional installer or contactor writing the cost to modify your existing cabinetry. As soon as we receive a copy of that document, we would be pleased to process the reimbursement for this modification work up to $300. Please verify with us again, the address you would like the reimbursement to be sent. You are a valued Whirlpool customer and we appreciate this opportunity to address your inquiry. We invite you to contact Whirlpool again either by calling (800) 253-1301 between the hours of 8 AM and 8 PM Monday & Tuesday and 9 AM and 7 PM ET Wednesday-Friday or by emailing whenever the need arises."

Given that it took them a month to reply and they already messed up my request (I bought a Whirlpool, not a KitchenAid, oven), I decided not to bother, but I guess there is a slight chance you can actually get reimbursed for the retrofitting expenses. Or maybe not.

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