The Cook Top Dilemma....

My house was built with a cook top over a wall oven provided by the builder.  It was the only appliance that came with the house.   Its a bit of an odd configuration.  Because the cook top is immediately over the wall oven, it makes the oven quite low to the ground.  This is a really old picture but you get the just.  Because the cook top sits into the counter 3", the oven has to clear that and have room for its controls.  When you cook something big in this oven like a turkey, its like dead lifting off the floor.  The rack in a conventional oven would be a good foot higher and have a storage drawer below the oven.

The cook top and wall oven were higher end models when they were installed in the house in 2001.  The oven bakes quite well but it isn't convection which I would really like to have because my life with three kids is crazy busy and anything where I can pimp out a few extra minutes helps.

I can live with the oven.  I don't love it but its fine.  The cook top on the other hand is my nemesis.  I have never loved it.  Our builder gave us a choice of white or black for the combo and I took white because my fridge was white.  The white oven was exactly as I had expected it to be.  The "white" cook top wasn't.

I three friend lives up the street that were given the black model.  Its all black and all three are in really good condition..  The white one however, has this odd white lip around it and the glass surface is a black and white speckle.  Its not black and its not white.  Its YUCKY.  Making it even more yucky is the white rim around the edge that is some sort of painted surface that has been affected by the heat and has chipped away.  I suspect its from the heat because the worst part is by the big burner.

About a month ago, I actually took a paint scraper to it to see how easy it would be to just scrape off the white paint.  I think the raw metal is better looking than the white.  The bits by the burner were very easy to scrape off, the rest is stuck.  So much for that plan.

In redoing the counter, I need to either have a hole cut in solid surface for this cook top, replace it, or replace both it and the oven with a slide in range.  I am torn.

I am concerned about putting this baby into a new counter because I am worried that the hole in the new counter might not be the same size as newer model cook tops.  I am concrened about buying a new cook top and leaving the oven because I know as soon as I do that, this oven will roll over and die.

I like the look of this LG range.  My husband Ralphie has insisted that if we replace the current situation with a range, the knobs have to be on the front.  I am not on the take from LG but I would delightfully take a stove from them were they to offer.  :)

The upside of this is I could upgrade to a convection oven.  The down side is the cost.  Slide in ranges are expensive and a lot are really quite homely looking.

I can't wrap my head around the design of this GE slide. To me it looks like a crash landed UFO.  

This Maytag is a bit better design wise. I kind of like the retro shape window.

I think as I look at slide in ranges, I am talking myself into keeping the cook top oven arrangement.  They all seem to have a dreaded lip on them.  The one on the existing cook top drives me apes.  I have also thought about getting an induction cook top but that would involve getting a whole new set of ferris (iron based) pots.

No knobs, no weird lips.