Some very quick Googling revealed it was a 36 inch oven. Take your pick of manufacturer, they'll all pretty much fit a 72 pound ball of meat...

Hi Greg, That's the conclusion I was coming to a well, since I need the ducting on the kitchen side of the wall. (The other side will be a bedroom, probably the guest room.) I drew the thing four different ways in SketchUp and did 2d images of them.... Chimney hood. I think this one is my favorite because I'm going for a contemporary look: Hood under stacked cabinets like my architect suggested. Overwhelming, but maybe OK if I were going for a more traditional look. A lighter color on the 2nd row might make it a it better, but I couldn't find an easy way to draw that. Lowering the ceiling by a foot might help too, by making the 2nd row shorter. A chase / soffit like tubeman has. I think this one is a close second place visually. I wonder if this would be quieter since the ducting would be less exposed. Just for the heck of it, a hood inside a wooden enclosure. This looks nicer than I thought it would, and it might be nice in a more traditional / transitional design. It's probably not quite right for me, but I need to think about it and go find some real life pictures of this sort of design. Thanks for all the advice! BTW, for anyone wanting to play with SketchUp, the 3d warehouse has some "SketchData" frameless cabinet components that make this sort of thing pretty easy to create. There are even some YouTube videos explaining how to use them. Laura

Thanks for the input so far; more, please! Mossfern, you give me hope that things will work out okay if we punt and just get a nice 36" range :-) If others have a positive experience with this setup, I would be reassured to hear about it. Willtv, thank you for the information. We did also look into the cooktop + separate oven option (I asked about it a week or so ago because finding a short enough oven was a problem.) We plan to have a separate wall oven elsewhere in the kitchen. I don't think we have the counter space to build a surround -- there is only 18" allowance for counter on either side of the range. (We also talked to the architect about having the island at 36" height while the rest of the kitchen counters were at 34", but he didn't think that would look good either.) JohnLiu, thanks for your suggestion and you may have responded to my question last week, too :-) As far as we can see, all the short drop-in ranges have electric cooktops, and we definitely want gas. But I have just gone ahead and written to AJ Madison to see what they have. More input would be most welcome.

I've seen mechanical contractors who do plumbing, hvac and electrical but it's rare and they are usually different crews. Since you have never cooked with a proper vent hood, is it possible you have done enough research on going with induction instead of gas? Most who spend time with both prefer induction. If you stay under 400 cfm, you don't need make up air provisions. For a gas cooktop of that size, the vent hood capture area will need to be well planned to do an adequate job under 400 cfm.