How To Replace Your Range With Modular Cooking

Replace Your Range With a Modular Kitchen

Two years for us, now, and we've never looked back. My wife loves to cook, is brilliant at it, bakes bread, does a fabulous holiday turkey. And we just do not need a "range" that combines an oven with a stove.

We gave up on the "range" concept when ours died twice, with every important part of it in perfect working order. Except, that is, for the tiny circuit board, that overheated a chip, or something, and refused to tell the perfectly-good components to turn on. The first repair was $1000, and the repairman said if it happened again, give up - just buy a new $2000 range. It failed again. We replaced it with what you see below, instead.

We tried out a single-burner first, so we have just three. When that one dies, we'll replace with another double-burner. Either way, they run about $70-$80 US per burner.

The praises of "induction" have been sung elsewhere. I won't compete, just say "It's all true in our experience; induction is the best".

I'm jealous of those shopping for induction now: options have multiplied like crazy since we purchased. It's a hot area of innovation, if I may be forgiven the remark.

Finding your own steel table, or perhaps your own solution with a carpenter, is left to the taste of the homemakers.

And lastly, unless you want that carpenter solution, if you just do what we did, and put all this where the range used to be, the labour costs are zero. Connie assembled and set up the steel table herself.

The 220V adapter-plug allows you to run two double-induction cooktops totalling over 4500 Watts, off your old stove plug.

I only show the Wolf-brand countertop oven, because my wife did a ton of shopping for this, and there's little comparison: Wolf is the top product. We've done everything with it. You can go cheaper, but since we were not spending another $2000 on a range, we splurged on the most "expensive".

And, crucially, this solution is modular. The cooktops are by far the most-used part; they may go every ten years. But also the cheapest part! The Wolf ovens are designed to last 20 years, warrantied for five. The roaster oven will last as long as the metal table, in my opinion: for life. The roaster oven will be so-little used - just for turkeys and big roasts - that it'll last. If not - just $130.

We probably wouldn't use the roaster oven down there on the floor, that's just where to store it. But that's another value of modularity: we can take it out to the patio, to cook a roast in summer, and not heat up the kitchen!

Similarly, it's just one minute's work to take one or two cooktops from here, to another counter, so that two people can work at once.

So:

It's cheaper to buy to start with;
It's cheaper to replace, by far, just one part at a time, as different things wear out, rather than a single point of failure sending $2000 in mostly-good appliance to a junkyard;
It saves energy.
It gives you the cooking advantages of natural gas (instant heat, and instant reduction of heat, when it starts to boil over), without the negatives.

While you're going induction, go "no range" while you're at it.