First, the addition of a prep sink is always wise from a functional point of view.In small one cook kitchens sometimes beauty should override function.In your case the prep sink should be considered a must.

Second, you are building my "realistic" dream kitchen if I bought a house one size larger. So, no not too many ovens.

Thirdly, IMO triple stacking is a bad idea. Looks great in kitchen magazines but the bottom appliance gets less and less use as time goes by.My guess is that wall-oven/steam oven combo will see the least use at the same time so I would keep those together. Move the speed oven across the kitchen to keep multiple cooks out of each other's way.

That obviously ruins the design lines of your kitchen. The least obtrusive intallation on the other side of the kitchen would be in place of an upper cabinet above the dishwasher.

A middle ground between triple stacking and placing it on the other side of the kitchen would be at counter height on the other side of the fridge from the wall-oven. This does not ruin the lines of your kitchen but puts the cooks traffic in each other's way.Plus,I don't know what surrounding your fridge with ovens does to cooling efficiency and compressor longevity LOL.

Lastly, are you comfortable with significantly reducing the life expectancy of the magnetron in your speed oven by using it as a workhorse microwave in order to reduce clutter?

I don't think you can triple stack these safely. I have the Gaggenau combi-steam over single oven and an Advantium speed oven on the opposite wall. They wouldn't be at at all convenient heights if they were stacked all together.

My first reaction was "yes" to too many ovens, but it's really just four. Most people I know who have 36" ranges use the range oven for everything. :) Do you eat toast? That's the function of a toaster oven that isn't well covered by your list.

I do think you could function very well with one less oven, but if you eliminated the speed oven, for instance, you'd surely want a microwave. The range oven is big enough to hold a lot of dinner. Dessert could be made in the steam or speed oven depending on what it was, and the bread could be baked in the steam oven (if it's a combi- that also serves as a convection oven) or big oven, depending on what dinner is, how well the range oven bakes, and what kind of bread it is. That is, you could easily get by without the wall oven, but why not get it if you have the space, money and desire?

OTOH, I see a lot of potential difficulties with your kitchen layout. That three stations on three walls with island in the middle design is beloved of builders, but is a classic of "guy design", where the symmetry of sprinkling the appliances around the room is given more consideration than how the work in the kitchen is actually done. The barrier island impeding travel between all three stations is also a problem. Your plan could benefit greatly from zone design and workflow analysis. I highly recommend posting on the Kitchens Forum and soliciting advice there about arranging the kitchen so that it gives you the best working area possible.

deeageaux and plllog: Thank you so much for your feedback!

plllog: regarding the layout - I posted on the kitchens forum about a week ago and the only feedback I got was the need for a prep sink which has been added to the plans and I just uploaded the newest revision to my photo album.

The thought is that the prep sink will make the fridge, prep, and cooking areas very close to each other and cleanup will be out of the way of anyone cooking. Maybe I'll post again and see if I get some more feedback.

Thanks again.

If we all built kitchens based the most effiecient design after workflow analysis we would then be building commercial kitchens inside our homes.

Giving some consideration to building the kitchen as you have imagined it in your mind's eye is important too. Just being irrationally happy is important.

Having expansive uncluttered countertops or whatever your heart's desire is also important.

BTW I eat toast and don't own a toaster. And don't plan to either.

To me, it dries out the bread too much.

I make toast on a griddle.

Crunchy on the surface and soft and moist inside.

I may have misread your plans but it doesn't appear that you have any counter space next to your stacked ovens. There's a pantry on one side and the refrigerator on the other. It's quite handy to have a counter adjacent to the oven. Maybe this isn't that important since you will have a range or perhaps you plan on just using the island.

I'd also take another look at the placement of the refrigerator. It's a real step saver to have the frig on the same wall as the main sink, or at least the prep sink. In your plan you'd have to make a 180 turn just to take something from the frig to the sink- and that's a very common act. Just imagine making a salad - taking all the ingredients out of the frig and then washing, cutting, and dumping waste into the garbage disposer. The same thing goes for filling a pot of water and carrying it to the stove.

pllog's right about sprinkling work areas around the kitchen. Visually it might look balanced but it will increase your steps.

I don't know where you are in your plans but one way to see if your design works for you and the way you cook is to make a mockup. You can spread a roll of shelf paper out on your counters and then draw your appliances and cabinets on them, don't forget to include the island. Then 'play house' and pretend to make a meal. It may sound simplistic but it can be really helpful.

This isn't appliance related - but if you only have one window in the kitchen I'd opt for the largest one that will fit. In our kitchen I couldn't wait to rip out the window over the sink and then we installed a bay window in maximize the light.

Deeageaux, A poorly designed kitchen can actually discourage people from cooking. A kitchen designed well for workflow can make cooking so much easier that much more pleasure is to be had. That doesn't mean it can't be pretty!! My new kitchen is, and it's the most convenient, workflow based design I could come up with. OT -- Tell me more about toasting on a griddle. I've never known anyone who did that (we used to have a stove top toaster, which made great toast, but I can't imagine how you toast on a griddle).

Bermudafire, do post again in Kitchens when you're sure about the ovens. I think there are a few tweaks which can really improve your layout.

I don't think his design is so poor he will not want to cook in it. LOL

Pretty is in the eye of the beholder I guess. But I find that that beautiful and functional are many times at odds. Did I tell you about the supermodel I dated in my 20's ? putta ump pump!

What is there to tell about toasting bread on a griddle?

I fire up the burner,place the griddle on top,place bread on the griddle,and turn over until nice golden brown color on each side. Sometimes place butter while still on griddle and melts in.

It does come out like in a toaster. But that is the point.

Burmudafire, please excuse the hijacking of your thread.

So, Deeageaux, you put me in the mood for toast so I just tried it. Not too bad for my first attempt. I think it would work better on machine sliced bread, and with a denser crumb. My handcut, multigrain toasted unevenly (probably bad contact with the griddle from bad cutting) and wasn't as well caramelized and crisp as I'd like (probably too texture-y and, again, not enough contact with the heat), but not bad at all. :) Thanks for teaching me a new trick!

Back on topic, I can only say my new kitchen is really easy and fun to cook in, and I did a lot of cold meals in the old one because I hated the three walls, big distance, so much.

I'll echo Maire-Cate, and go so far as to say it helps if you can build it out of boxes, chairs and whatnot, and "play cook" things you commonly do, not leaving out any of the steps. Even better if you can have someone reading out a recipe so that you can't cheat. :) If you usually get all the dry ingredients first, ask the reader to read all of them at once so you're not doing extra that you wouldn't normally, and ask for recaps, and all, but actually mime taking out the salt, parsley, onions, etc., chopping, sauteing, stirring, shaking, getting the milk, etc. It can be very informative.

Someone pointed this out to me on my plans and i thought it was a good point. (sorry if already said) Having refrigerator next to ovens may introduce them hitting each other while both open possibly denting the fridge door. Also my mom thought it was weird to have something so cold next to something so hot! And I would think about landing space for groceries and prep space. I think the sink is really tight in the new layout.

I didn't understand what is on the wall next to the range.

Thanks for all of the comments.

Pillog and Deeageaux, hijacking excused. I too was curious about toasing on a griddle :) The way Deeageaux described the crunchy outside/soft inside is exactly the way I like it. We were planning on trying to use the Miele speed oven as a toaster and if that didn't work we could always buy a small toaster to keep in a drawer.

Deeageaux, we are planning on using the microwave function of the speed oven as rarely as possible. We think there are very few things a microwave can do without ruining the food!

Sophie, are you refering to the wall cabinets on either side of the hood? Those are 18" tall horizontal cabinets with lift up glass doors. We were thinking about adding a window above each one. I think you might have been confused by one of the drawings that makes it look like there is an empty cabinet on top - that shouldn't be there!

We will have to look closely at the clearance on the oven and fridge doors. We hadn't even thought about the potential issues with a "hot" and "cold" appliance next to each other.

The landing spot for the ovens is something we need to think about. Adding the prep sink at that end of the island took away the area we had thought would serve that function.

You have all brought up great things to consider. Looks like we will have to break out some boxes and other props to mock this up and see what we think.

I have posted in the kitchen forum and linked it here.

Here is a link that might be useful: Kitchen forum thread

There really isn't a problem with the temperatures of a fridge and oven next to each other. Both are well insulated and there's cabinetry between. In my old kitchen, the poorly insulated old gas oven was next to the half broke old fridge and there weren't any issues. The fridge door (outside) never got warm, nor did the cabinet side of the oven, and fridge put out heat anyway, so there's no cooling of the oven. The effect of a poorly insulated oven heating a kitchen a few degrees will make a fridge work a bit harder, but that would happen even with several cabinets between.