You don't have to change your window opening, especially if it affects how it looks from the outside.

I don't know why you think pots and pans are a menace to your glass; it's not like they will be leaping around on your range!

Why not simply arrange to have support behind the range and below the level of the ss so you can have the ss behind the range. If you are worrying about things falling into the window sill well and thence behind the range, it can be blocked off so that won't happen.

I am a big fan of leaving window openings alone where ever possible, as monkeying around with them on a room by room basis leaves the outside elevations in chaos.

HTH,

L

HOOORAY you found a layout and solution.
Buehl ROCKS!!!!

As for the worry about your glass. It will be fine.
I think you might want to think about glass that can take
heat. (If there is such a thing)

I have a range that is gas on glass. Glass is super easy
to clean. So if by chance you boil over chocolate and it
splatters, burns and bombs out of it's pot into an
explosion onto your windows and walls, no worries.
You can use Weisman glass cleaner. It takes the grease
away and cleans your glass to perfection.
Not sure about the roughness of glass block but never the
less Glass it is far easier to clean than drywall.

Hooray again for your plan.
~boxerpups

I have a gas cooktop in front of a counter-depth window--the sill sits just a fraction of an inch over the countertop. No banging danger that I can see, although personally I'd prefer a little more space between a big rear gas flame and a cold window in February, though nothing has happened yet. Remember, you can bring the range forward rather than raising the window up, if that helps.

i'm glad things are moving forward for you, this is the best layout, by far.

a couple of suggestions... bring the countertop material up and make a window sill out of it. if soapstone, use soapstone tile backsplash and soapstone sill. the wall will reflect light differently from the counter and the sill will look a little different too, so it won't appear as monochromatic as you would think, and it will unify all of the surfaces in the small space.

look carefully for a skilled mason so that when you shorten the window, the brickwork will look right. it cost me about $300 for a mason to weave in three courses and redo the brick sill when i shortened a window for the same reason as you are doing, and it looks fine from the outside, the brick work placement matches well, but the mortar is too light, even six years later. none of the neighbors have complained yet, though.

looking forward to pictures from this project, maybe i missed it, but what did you chose for cabinets?

I don't know why you think pots and pans are a menace to your glass; it's not like they will be leaping around on your range!

LOL, lirodendron! As I say, I have little experience with slide-ins. I went to look more closely at them last night, and I was surprised that they just dropped off the back. What I am worried about is, say, moving one of my large cast-iron pans from one side of range to the other, and pushing another cast-iron pan off the back burner. From there, my little brain sees cast iron sliding off burner into glass with unhappy results.

You raise a really good point about the elevation that I hadn't thought of. I am grateful for your making me think about that. I just went and looked, and, on the ground floor, there is the kitchen window, a door, a (disused) milk chute, and another window. The door enters the house about 3 steps down, so it is much lower. The other window, however, does NOT match up with the kitchen window! It is presently 2 courses of brick higher than the kitchen window. My plan would be to raise the kitchen window by either 3 or 4 courses (8 to 10.5"). Therefore, it will be no more out of balance than before, just the other direction! I will give your "leave it alone" suggestion more thought...

Thanks! A_D

Boxer, Marcolo, and Detroit:

Regarding the layout, YES, Buehl rocks indeed! Along with some other generous folks. I was thinking of having a "layout reveal" post, and maybe I still will, but here is the short story: I decided to take the two most promising designs (basically Buehl #2 and Buehl #4) to a KD. In any case, I consider myself "aesthetically challenged" and wanted a local KD to help with material selection, color coordination, etc. My instructions were to help me decide between the layouts, and to "spiff up" the final choice. I even gave her the URL to the GW thread so she could see the reasoning behind the choices. I contacted her on May 11, and this was supposed to take 2 weeks. The kitchen has been gutted since June 13. Just got to the position of making the final layout choice yesterday. Sigh. (Actually, even though I am soooo far behind my schedule, this experience makes me really glad that I am doing the work myself. This feeling of being held hostage by an outside person is exactly why I feared going with a GC!)

Re: glass. Yes, I am excited about the "pleasant under glass" rangetop! I plan to use a thermal pane with smooth glass on the range side and obscure glass beyond that, to make the inside easy to clean. (Maybe triple pane, with smooth outside, too.) As you always have to point out, Marcolo, it is not like I get a ton of grease on the wall behind my old range!

maybe i missed it, but what did you chose for cabinets?
Haven't chosen yet. Request for advice probably coming soon to a thread near you! :-)

I don't know how helpful this is, because it's difficult to tell what's going on behind the range from the photo, but I recently found this on the BH&G website....I'm looking to do this in our kitchen.

Hlove,

Interestingly, one thing I noticed when I went to look at a bunch of ranges last night was that pro-style ranges (like the one n the picture) have just the right amount (IMHO) of backguard. They all seemed to have a small, ~1" upturn (I think for a vent) at the rear. This seems like it would be enough to catch the errant pan. None of the domestic-kitchen style ranges that I saw had this.

Can you pull your counter forward just a tiny bit? (Bonus points if you can actually get extra storage for this.)

The low backguard on the prostyle ranges is usually called "island trim".

I think if you are using standard appliances and cabinets, you will have a bit of space behind the slide-in range. I think it should be enough of a buffer.

Since you're doing opaque glass on the outside, would it be bad to make the hole on the outside whatever looks good on the OUTSIDE and then cover up what you need to on the inside?

What about pushing the window out like many people do behind their sinks? I pushed my window out approx 8" and I love having the extra space. I can picture this extra space being helpful behind a slide in range. Then you could have the window extend down to the counter/stove. I have a DCS slide in range and it has a small lip in the back where the oven vents.

I think it's a shame to have the hood block the light from your only window : (
I'm new to your threads and layout dilemmas. Why is it you aren't putting the sink under the window and the stove where the sink is laid out?

Judydel: Thanks for your interest. Yes, the lip of your DCS would be perfect. I really don't see such a nice pro-style range in our budget, sadly. (BTW, your inset cabinets look fantastic!)

As to the sink/range placement, I DO have a nice, big window above the sink. The sink is getting the preferred spot, don't worry! The view is not great out of either window, but it is much better from the sink window, as well. I agree with not wanting to block the light from ANY window with the range hood, but that was the only way to make the layout work. If you really want to know the gory details, I again copied the link to the thread where GW helped me work that out.

Fori: Pulling the counter/cabs out a little is an interesting idea! I think I could probably swing that. (KD may kill me at this point!) I could even collect your bonus points with deep drawers (but probably no extra points for the corner super susan). I am convinced that the outside will look just fine with a few fewer courses of brick. I have a really skilled, meticulous mason who will do the work, too! He rebuilt my chimney a few years ago, and you cannot even tell it isn't original!

Thanks for sharing and suggesting. What a great resource!

Here is a link that might be useful: Challenging Layout conundrum

HI Angie - this is my first post as I am brand new. we are remodeling our kitchen too and will be putting a slide in gas range in front of a window as well - we'll be placing a hood in front of the window as well. I, too, am nervous about the windows behind the stove. Love the ideas. If any of you have photos to share of the hood in front of the window, I would appreciate. thanks so much!

Hi, Greenhouse -- I still feel pretty new here myself, but let me say Welcome to Gardenweb Kitchen Forum!

My kitchen is still under construction. In fact, the masons came today, coincidently, to raise the bottom of my window by about 11" to get it above the countertop. Thus, I cannot give you any of my pictures, but here is a link to one thread about windows behind ranges with several pictures, and here is one outside link with a nice picture of a window behind a range with a hood.

I am not really nervous about the placement anymore. I decided to raise the window up so that the bottom of the window sill (properly called a "stool" if you are speaking to a window vendor) is about 3.5" above the top of the burners. I plan to make a stool out of my countertop material (an idea I got from GW, cannot remember who), and so that will "catch" any pans before it hits the window.

Other thoughts I have had that might be useful to you. I realize that it may be important to make it look like this was planned, i.e., to try to avoid having it look like I just stuck a range in front of a window. To that end, I plan to use some obscure glass rather than clear glass. The way I decided to do this is to have a fixed, non-operable window, with two layers of thermal pane. Inside of this, I am going to have a stained glass panel made up by a local artisan, and just place that in front of the thermal pane. Then, on the inside, I will have a pane of plain glass, just to make it easy to clean.

As I already mentioned, a stool out of countertop material should also help it look less like a standard window. Finally, I plan to tile around the window opening rather than use a wooden casing, as many normal windows do. I think that with all of that, it should look planned.

Another issue you touched on was the hood. Since the whole point of keeping the window was to preserve the natural light, I am planning to use as slim of a hood as possible. I am thinking of one of those ones with very thin bottoms (like this Fisher&Paykel) or one of those with a glass canopy, which many companies make now. Unfortunately, I really fell in love with this Miele DA 249 glass canopy hood , but it is very expensive. The downside to these is that they tend to look very modern, and my kitchen was supposed to look more transitional/traditional. Oh well, you can't have everything! Oh, another thing: my range will be 30", but my window opening is about 34", so I decided to get a 36" hood so it covers all of the window area.

Mounting the hood may be a bit of a challenge, as normally they should bolt to the wall behind the range, where you and I will have a window. One option would be to use a hood meant for an island, so it would hang from the ceiling. I don't think this will work for me because I need to vent out the wall, but it may work well for you. Instead, I am planning to use a regular wall-mount hood, but to make a support that "hangs" down from the top of the window, down to the level where the hood mounts are.

Hope this helps! A_D