New Kitchens / Remodels

[dogrange]

Anyone have any thoughts on the quality/reliability of a the typical hi-end suburban chef ranges? We're going all gas, 36" and liked the look/feel of the Wolf and Blue Star models in the showroom. The internet, predictably, is a cesspool of both horror stories and effusive praise of both brands. Anyone have any personal experience with these 2 (or others)?

Needs:
No computer panel
reliability

Wants:
"quality" appearance (i.e., design and apparent build quality)

[sine]

Our all gas Wolf is 16 years old...........just had a gas manifold for the oven replaced. SubZero purchased Wolf some years ago and SubZ still fully maintains old units-with some minor improvements made to replacement parts. As a result of a new, slightly modified manifold, our oven performs better than new.

[dgaddis]

Wish I had seen this thread earlier. Our new house has a really old fridge that we planned to replace when our current house sold and we had some extra money in hand, but, it turns out the stove top (glass) had a crack in it. So we picked up a Samsung fridge and range on Black Friday. We'll do granite counter tops and new cabinets eventually, but the current stuff is fine functionally so it's staying for now.

VSalon keeps getting better!

[dogrange]

Our all gas Wolf is 16 years old...........just had a gas manifold for the oven replaced. SubZero purchased Wolf some years ago and SubZ still fully maintains old units-with some minor improvements made to replacement parts. As a result of a new, slightly modified manifold, our oven performs better than new.

Thanks. Wolf range ordered! Hope the new ones are as good as the old ones!

[j44ke]

Very pleased with our Samsung electric range. It's a slide in like that and has the option to divide it internally for two different baking temps. It worked well last Thursday and has been great for the last 12 months. It's not induction, but it boils water plenty fast. I think induction is popular with folks who are coming from an outdated or really crappy electric stove top ATMA. New electric ranges work considerably better than the stuff from 5, 10, 20 years ago.

Samsung 30" Flex Duo Slide-In Electric Range - Stainless Steel - BJs Wholesale Club

Good to know. We are interested in induction because our Bosch range is super difficult to control. The glass top doesn't cool fast enough to taper off cooking power and prevent going beyond the done point with a lot of foods. We are constantly having to move pots around on the stove to get them away from heat and prevent overcooking. Also the Bosch burners take a long time to get to cooking temp, so it really slows down the process. And then suddenly everything is burning. So it is making us crazy.

We are also vegetarians, so really electric anything is sub-optimal. The densest thing we have to cook is a potato. A stove is overkill. A Bunsen burner would work for us. Actually my favorite kitchen was in Portugal, and it consisted of 3 heating rings on stands connected by hose directly to a gas line that ran along the tiled backsplash of the (also) tiled kitchen counter. Made the kitchen seem like a lab, which is since cooking is chemistry, seemed appropriate somehow.

[mmoore]

our electric cook top is the same.
I cant for the life of me remember the model, but its a mid grade unit. im always moving things around... it seems like the different levels are built on a time based duty cycle instead of reading surface temperatures. i.e., put it on mid level and it is on/off 50% of the time instead of a mid type heat.

a change in pan size on the same element makes a difference in the heat... or when doing a pan reduction the closer you get to finishing the more you have to turn the heat down... but you need to do it well in advance because as you say @j44ke it holds heat.

[j44ke]

There is a gas line about 8 feet from the range located in our kitchen island. But to get it to the range, it would have to go underneath the floor and (apparently) can't use flexible line. So that would mean taking up a 2 x 8 section of 75 year old rock maple flooring that I am not going to do. So we'll wait until we redo the kitchen in about 5 years and can work out a solution while we have max maneuverability.

We are in a housing market where what we do to the kitchen basically means zilch to our property value. Or any improvements we do to our house really. Just so long as it doesn't fall down, its value will continue to rise. Eventually we won't be able to afford to replace it. Or some developer will offer the building a price per square foot that will be difficult to reject.

Lunacy.

[Too Tall]

Shoe molding gets installed today and the hood motor is defective. Other than that, it's beginning to look alot like our kitchen re-do is done.
kitchen1.jpg

[Matthew Strongin]

Looks great, Josh! And that table and chairs on the right are killer.

[sine]

Shoe molding gets installed today and the hood motor is defective. Other than that, it's beginning to look alot like our kitchen re-do is done.
kitchen1.jpg

Don't you need to hook up the trainer and pedal away to power that fan?

[Too Tall]

Err uhh no I might spill my beer sine ;)

[davids]

The first piece of the future kitchen:

IMG_20151211_112019 (768x1024).jpg

[j44ke]

...and the hood motor is defective...

When we bought our house, I had to remove the hood motor over our range and clean all the coagulant off of it (one of the previous owners was Argentine so ate beef for breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert and snacks.) Like someone shot it through the side of a cow and then installed it in the hood. At one point, I thought I was never going to get it all back together again. But I did. Had the vent people come clean out the vent to the outside, whereupon we discovered that the bathroom vents, the dryer vent and the hood vent all connected to the same exhaust vent to the out of doors. Basically a dust/lint/grease cannon primed and ready to go. Just needed a spark of some sort. So we'll split those up when we renovate in the future. Meanwhile, our hood is sparkly and the motor no longer smells like a slaughterhouse.

[dgaddis]

Don’t ever buy appliances from Home Depot. They don't deliver/install themselves, they contract it out. We had a new fridge and stove coming Friday, the crew was supposed to be there between 1-5, they showed up at 6:30. Two dudes in an enterprise rent a truck full of appliances and it smelled like they’d been smoking weed all day. They didn’t know what they were doing.

When they tried to get the stove out we discovered a giant fan bolted to the floor, and they didn’t know nothing about that, so they couldn’t get it out or put the new one in, they’d have to have a service team come out to do it.

They got the old fridge out, but the new one has to have the doors taken off to come in, and with the water/electric lines running to the door they didn’t know how to do that either, and it was getting late. UGH. I didn’t trust them to do it right anyways. So, the new fridge is plugged in in the garage with all our food in it, and the old stove is still in and working, so we’re at least functional. The service team can’t come out until the 23rd though.

SO, next weekend I’m just going to do all myself, and when the service team shows up they just need to take the old stove and GTFO. The guy across the street has some handtrucks and said he’d help me get it all in the house. Setting it up will be easy from that point. The fridge is on wheels actually, which is nice. We missed Stephanie’s work’s (her new job she just started last week) Christmas party because they got there so late.

I'm going to have to trim the bottom of the cabinet face frame just a hair (1/8" actually) to get the new fridge in.



It looks like we have a REALLY nice garage fridge right now.

[j44ke]

I've decided I only need the installation guys for muscle. Haul the new thing in and haul the old things out. If I see the install going cockeyed, I kick them out and do it myself.

[NYCfixie]

Had the vent people come clean out the vent to the outside, whereupon we discovered that the bathroom vents, the dryer vent and the hood vent all connected to the same exhaust vent to the out of doors. Basically a dust/lint/grease cannon primed and ready to go. Just needed a spark of some sort. So we'll split those up when we renovate in the future. Meanwhile, our hood is sparkly and the motor no longer smells like a slaughterhouse.

When we purchased our NJ home, we were pissed later to find out that both upstairs bathroom fans were vented into the attic and not to the outside via vents in the roof or eves. Also pissed that the "local well respected" home inspector missed a very basic thing.

Don’t ever buy appliances from Home Depot. They don't deliver/install themselves, they contract it out.

That is all you needed to say. Home Depot sucks for this kind of stuff and/or anything that they contract out. We either used Sears or a local appliance showroom that was invested in the community and keeping good referrals.



I am sorry to hear you are having these issues but this reminds me that my wife and I made the correct decision to downsize from a NJ home that we owned to a Boston/Brookline apartment that we rent (aka if something breaks call the management company to deal with it).

[sine]

Don’t ever buy appliances from Home Depot. They don't deliver/install themselves, they contract it out. We had a new fridge and stove coming Friday, the crew was supposed to be there between 1-5, they showed up at 6:30. Two dudes in an enterprise rent a truck full of appliances and it smelled like they’d been smoking weed all day. They didn’t know what they were doing.


[

We just went through some HD aggravation earlier this afternoon.

Samsung 4 door Flex was to be installed today. The delivery crew opened the rear of the truck......our fridge had fallen over smack onto a dolley. The one fellow who came in and started to remove the old fridge told us that we needed a shut off valve behind the fridge. Really? The one in the basement right underneath the fridge is not sufficient! We purposely delayed delivery by a week so our cabinet guy could remove the cabinet above the fridge to resize it.

Anyhow, we rejected the tipped fridge (wife noted the S/N.....some of these people think they are slick) and I headed off to HD.

Guess what, I wasn't the only one who had an effed up delivery today. Rather than wait and listen to some seriously pissed off people, I found someone else who turned out to be super friendly and most helpful, showed me exactly what I needed (shut off valve) and placed a new order for a replacement fridge. So, new fridge is expected a week from today........and I will be taking this time to redo the water line with a damn shut off valve right behind the fridge.

[davids]

Home Depot sucks for this kind of stuff and/or anything that they contract out. We either used Sears or a local appliance showroom that was invested in the community and keeping good referrals.

Yah. I feel like I just learned my lesson re: buying appliances from big box stores. Ordered a dishwasher from Best Buy, since they had the lowest total price (including installation, etc) and fastest delivery. Then delivery was cancelled, then cancelled again. It finally arrived two weeks after the original delivery date.

On the positive side, the installers did a fine job. But I was pissed to see that Best Buy charged me for the whole thing - dw, delivery, installation - on the day I ordered, 2 1/2 weeks before it got to me. Yeah, BB needs that cashflow...

I'm going back to the smaller local guys for everything else.

[j44ke]

NYC is a nightmare when it comes to installation and removal. There are so many people with so little knowledge of how things are supposed to work or be installed and they have so much money that installers get used to doing a crap job and walking out of the apartment without any sort of scrutiny. Finding a good installer, even if you are willing to pay triple just for quality, is very very difficult. And when you do find a good one, they are hard to get because they are so busy. A good building with relatively high maintenance costs that includes a top notch facilities supervisor and staff is golden. The first year we lived in NYC, we rented in a building where the deliveries of appliances etc. were taken by the supervisor, and he and his guys brought it up to the apartment and did the installation. Immaculate work. They were totally invested in the building, and they didn't want any surprises - leaks, fires, burst pipes, electrical shorts, etc. - because they recognized cheap ass work now meant headaches later.

[NYCfixie]

NYC is a nightmare when it comes to installation and removal. There are so many people with so little knowledge of how things are supposed to work or be installed and they have so much money that installers get used to doing a crap job and walking out of the apartment without any sort of scrutiny. Finding a good installer, even if you are willing to pay triple just for quality, is very very difficult. And when you do find a good one, they are hard to get because they are so busy.

I think this can be said for the entire NYC metro area.

We needed to gut renovate our master bath in NJ (typical 1940s center hall colonial with plaster walls and mud set tiles which means 3" of concrete under all tile work) so we chose a craftsperson who was booked out 6 months and had impeccable references. This was in 2007 when most other contractors had no work and many were going out of business.

Did he cost a great deal more? Yes.
Did he make the bathroom look like it could have been from the 40s? Yes.
Was it worth every penny and more? Yes.
Did we use him for other work? Yes
Did we ever use anyone else? No.