1. Most people who do higher than standard counters do this with a cooktop and wall ovens and thus don't have the issues that you are contemplating. Switching to that would solve your issues.

2.With a platform, it's virtually impossible to remove the range for routine maintenance and cleaning. With a pro grade range, it WILL be impossible to move in or out without owning an air sled.

3. It is a code violation (based on the HUGE fire safety risk) to have the range be below counter height.

4. It will be virtually impossible to get anyone else to buy into your vision down the road. As in, you'll be killing your resale value rather than adding to it with a fresh new kitchen. (See the discussion linked below.)

If changing to a cooktop and wall ovens isn't doable, you might scrap doing the perimeter counters at taller height and just do the island or peninsula taller than standard.

Here is a link that might be useful: 40

Thanks Hollysprings, some good points. Perhaps I was overstating how high we would be going with the stove. I'm thinking 37" countertops - so 2 inches of plywood at the most underneath.

Cooktop and wall ovens are not an option at this time nor common in houses in our area. This is a reno on a relatively modest budget (Ikea cabs, keeping all appliances) - I refuse to overspend on the kitchen given the modest price the house would be worth. Although we will be selling within a few years it is important to me to get the kitchen that works best for us right now.

Standard counters are 36". Do you really want to raise the counters only 1" if you are going to sell soon?

I am currently in the middle of a serious DIY renovation. Keeping my kitchen cabinets, new appliances and adding about 1" of stone countertops. I took out a 70's era drop in electric range, which was custom built in. So, to get a 30" wide 36" tall freestanding range in place, I did add a 1" platform in the old space- saws-alled out the old base, then built up 1" and used the old plywood as a base. Made sure it fit the dimensions of the feet on the new range. Propane guy had no problem pulling it out for his install. Just putting in the stone countertops and looks great.

@Mariele Storm Yes, this is an old post, but it's not the only place that long-time, Mississippi-based kitchen designer who goes by the pseudonym Sophie Wheeler/hollysprings has said that raised countertops, even a few inches, make the surface "practically unusable." I must disagree with that entirely. The cooks in our kitchen aren't incredibly tall (5'7", 5'11"), but as you concur, the 36" high standard countertops can be hard on the back of someone approaching or exceeding those heights. We worked with mockup countertops for months and settled on 37.5" as an ideal height, so we'll be working around that number by setting the cutting board of our workstation sink at 37.5" and then putting the 3 cm stone countertop above it at a height of around 38.75" both of which heights work fine for tasks. Our sink will be 8" deep for reaching down into for washing food and dishes, so among all the different working surface levels we have, these specifications make the most sense. Once the maximum surface height reached over 39" and especially nearing 40", it felt too high for most daily tasks for the shorter of our cooks.

Back to the issue of raising the stove, most stoves specify that the counterop sit at least 1/4" below the hard edge of the stove surface. I've seen some pre-made industrial steel drawers that are meant to be bases for something like this situation, but none of the dimensions of the commercially available ones fit the standard stove size. Plywood seems to be an acceptable choice for constructing the base based on reports of a few others who have done this, but I do have a small concern about heat exposure in that application. Given the difficulty of moving a stove onto and off of a platform as Sophie Wheeler stated, it might be advantageous to consider putting casters on a platform and then mounting the stove on that to make moving back and forth easier for maintenance and re-installation.

When kitchens became standardized sizes starting in the 30’s, and counters were standardized at 36”, the older unfitted kitchen of different height components compromised as the fitted kitchen at 36” for all. Taking a step back to customize different work surfaces at better ergonomic heights is more of a step forward. Unfortunately, it leaves the person wanting to do this using custom options to do so. That raises the remodeling expenses, and keeps these options limited to those who can afford them.

The appliance clearance issues are the main drawback to this. Appliances are designed with the standard 36” counter height in mind, and the serviceability and safety of them requires that they sit on the floor, not a platform.

Cooking areas at 36” are actually ergonomically too high for most people, including tall ones. You would need to be really tall to have a taller than 36” range be ergonomic. The best cross section of population height for a cooking area is actually 32”. That allows easy vision into the pots, and is still high enough to make lifting a heavy pot of soup be about using your arms and not your back. As a work counter, 32” is too low for most, and you can’t have counters adjacent to a cooking surface be a fire hazard. Agsin, standardized sizes created the 36” height, when lower is actually better for all but the very tall.

At 6’ 2”, Julia Child would have benefited from a taller range than this old 70cm H one in her days in France. But you can see, it’s freestanding and much shorter than the adjacent counters.

A 400 pound pro style range is almost impossible to move in and out to clean under to begin with, even with their casters. Put it on a unsafe platform, that doesn’t take into account the necessary anti tipping prevention issue, and abandon hope all ye crumbs who fall into the gap and land under it. Or the safety of someone who opens the door and extends the oven rack with a 25 pound turkey on it,. Which is why tall height cooking areas are only really safely doable with a wall oven and cooktop.

A DW will have a significant gap above it with taller counters, and while it’s light enough to place on a platform for young heathy adults, it may not be so in 10 years time. It’s better to deal with the gap from above with a horizontal filler and possibly a profiled filler overlay.

I‘m almost 6‘. Its the super deep sinks that are popular that give my back trouble. Having the bottom of the sink be at 24”, is gosh darn low down. Raising the counter is less useful in that issue for me than choosing a more shallow sink. Which is why I chose a workstation sink, that has the deep well to hide the dirty dishes, but also has the shallower wet area that allows me to wash veggies or rinse things without bending down into the deeper reservoir to do it. Older free standing sinks were generally a bit taller and much shallower, because of this issue. A 6” deep sink isn’t a bad thing at all if you are tall, and have a deeper sink adjoining it. The workstation sink is a great benefit for those who need taller wet work areas.

Islands are the easy choice for custom height work areas that are affordable for most every kitchen. Adding a thicker butcher block counter makes for a nice section where most of the work in the kitchen can happen. Or, lowering the toe kick area allows for that lower area, for the shorter cook. Adding the smaller but shallow prep sink, or workstation prep sink, keeps you comfortable for most of the labor intensive work done in the kitchen. It’s a good compromise for those who need to accede to different height family members, or the close possible resale date. You can have your cake and eat it too.

@ Dormelles Wow, thank you for the well thought-out, in-depth reply--that definitely helps. I'm not even particularly tall--just 5'6", and washing dishes always gives me a tremendous backache, so I figured that 2" would be plenty... glad to know that it's in the right ballpark after your tests! (Especially since there likely wouldn't be anyone else using the kitchen, so I wouldn't have to worry about making it too tall)

See, the whole heat + wood combination is what worried me, too... but it seems to me that plenty of range stoves sit directly on hardwood floors without problems, so I don't really know if this would be any (or at least much) worse. I can't imagine it would impede circulation and cause heat to build up any more than regular flat floors? Especially since I've seen ranges sit directly on the subfloor, which is often just plywood. GE Appliances has this on their website: https://products.geappliances.com/appliance/gea-support-search-content?contentId=18975 If carpet is fine (and plywood is even recommended there!) then surely plywood is, too...?

The caster idea is clever. I was planning on securely adhering two layers of plywood together and then using the 4.5" legs that come with the cabinets to raise them up the rest of the way. It'd be easy to do the same thing with the range and just swap the legs for the cabinet with 4.5" heavy-duty locking casters. You could just cut out a section for the toekick that is only attached to the range's platform. Great solution! :)

Thanks @User for that insight. My current stove's height is around 38" at the grates, so it won't go lower, and I have done mockups of cooking on the range with slight elevation and believe we'll be safe, though as a rule I am with you in recommending that people not raise the stove if at all avoidable. We have spent months trying to find a way to do multi-level surfaces for the kitchen renovation which would have included keeping the stove at its current height, but our kitchen is so small that we have no room to create an island in the renovation or varying levels along the connected countertop as it runs, otherwise we certainly would have given ourselves more levels for different tasks. The height of the cutting board within the workstation sink was our target for perfection, and we'll have that at 37.5" which won't strain the back reaching deeper into the sink or tense the shoulders while prepping on the adjoining 3 cm thick counter. We will of course ensure safe, weighted construction with whatever platform is used to raise the stove to comply with the manufacturer's installation tolerances if we exceed the limitations of the leveling legs. I've never slid oven grates forward except to relocate them when the oven is off, but I would imagine doing this with a hot, full oven would be risky in any position whether flat on the ground or raised.

@Mariele Storm Thanks for the link to the GE guidelines for stove underlayment. I'd prefer to make my platform of steel, but cost on that could be prohibitive. I read about a neat little trick for toekick that needs to be removable, and that would be to use Velcro attachments to stick it in place. I think our elevation won't equal the height of toekick trim, though, so I'm leaning toward a separate steel or aluminum piece, perhaps something decorative. I've seen debates both ways on the dishwasher, trim piece above to accommodate a higher countertop or raising the dishwasher and putting trim at the floor. A lot of people seem to like the raised idea for relieving back strain, but technically it would be easier to keep it on the floor and just do the trim above. Thanks for your suggestions.

I’m 5’2”. I went in to Whole Foods yesterday and realized they’ve added another “top” shelf that I can‘t reach. This is how I meet tall people, I ask them to grab something for me that I can’t get to. If raising your counters is more ergonomic for you, then by all means do so if it’s going to be your last kitchen. But if you are planning to sell, keep in mind that the average height of women in the US is 5’4” and not a single one of them is going to be willing to buy a house with counters that come up to their chests.

To add my further take on this discussion speaking as an apparel patternmaker, the standard height for clothing construction for women in the United States has long been 5'6", but national averages by current surveys put average height at 5'5" which is influenced by the relatively more recent influx of Latin, Asian, and Middle Eastern immigrants. Heights of citizens from early immigrants of European and African heritages has actually increased over the years since the 1800s. The ethnicities dominant in your neighborhood may thus play a role in resale values relative to countertop height adjustments. I have a relative who at her adult height stands only 4'8", so I understand the comment of a counter coming up unusably high for some consumers, but alternately a 40" high countertop may still feel low for cooks on the other end of the height spectrum such as another relative of mine who stands over 6'2". After doing a fair amount of reading on non-standard counter heights, my impression is that rarely is a permanent counter over 41" high installed in a home where resale is a concern, and 40" high is pushing it already. As mentioned above, a shallow sink can help substantially with preventing back strain for a taller person if a standard 36" high counter is maintained for a remodel.

I'm 5'5". My counters are 36" my sink is 7" deep and its too darn low. I hand wash dishes and my back is killing me.

I refuse to go any shallower with my sink - the pots won't fit and I'll just get water everywhere.

I built my own workbench in the basement at about 37" high and actually find that more comfortable for fine motor tasks while standing.

My next kitchen reno will probably see me raise some of my counters to 37.5-38"- either by adjusting the cabinet feet, getting a thicker laminate countertop and/or adding a decor strip at the top of the cabinets to rest the counters on.

The main issue with that is the same as many of you - the height of the freestanding range relative to the counter where the sink is located.

I found a mention of using a steel or aluminum guard on the underside of cabinets that are a minimum of 24 inches above the cook top.

Hypothetically I might be able to use something like that to protect the side of the counter/cabinet that juts above the surface of the range.

I am now past the point in my remodel where I dealt with both raised cabinetry and the stove. We simply built a plywood platform with 4 casters for the stove, and our countertops ended up at 38 3/4" which seems a great height for cooks 5' 7" and taller. The sink is 8" deep. The original plan was to have the countertops end up around 38 1/4", but I neglected to remember that extra room is needed for leveling. Add a minimum of 1/2" and more like 3/4" allowance for most installations for shimming. I had actually tested a finished height of 38 3/4" for quite a few weeks and at the final moment before ordering decided to lower it to 38 1/4", so the mistake of not thinking about shim space turned out fine. Anything higher than 38 3/4" starts to get difficult for some tasks, though.

@Aglitter

do you happen to have any photos of the plywood platform on casters? I need to do the same, but need some examples

What are you doing about installing the anti tip brackets meant to keep the oven from tipping over on you when you extend the racks with something heavy on it.

https://m.lovethispic.com/amp/blog/47233/the-hidden-danger-of-the-household-oven%2C-and-how-to-keep-your-kids-safe

Im planning to use the anti tip bracket on the platform with the platform locked down too

that said...I have no kids in my life but still wouldnt want somehow it to tip in event a full huge turkey as on a rack that was pulled out idk that would even do it But better safe.