I love our 48" Viking. There is plenty of room when dh and I are cooking at the same time and the extra space also comes in handy when I'm cooking alone. I love having unused burners to slide hot pots onto for cooling off or as landing space for hot items from the oven. It contains all the hot items to one space instead having them scattered across the counter on trivets. And there are times when all of our burners are used at once (we have 6 + a griddle.) I use the small oven most of the time for our family of 4. The large oven is handy when I cook mulitiple items at the same temp or when I use large cookie sheets. Having 2 ovens comes in handy for different oven temps and for when one oven is tied up by something baking for an hour that shouldn't be disturbed. Take your favorite baking dishes to the showroom to make sure they fit into the small oven. The dishes I brought were a 9" Pyrex pie pan and a 9x13 pan. They fit fine in our Viking but didn't in some other brands. The brand I was leaning toward got eliminated because the oven rack brackets decreased the usable space so much that I couldn't fit either of the 2 dishes I brought. Just reading the oven specs wouldn't have been good enough since it seemed the oven was plenty big. Dh was happy we ended up with his top choice by default. I would definitely buy another 48" range if I had to do over again. Getting a range with 2 ovens and plenty of burner/elbow space was a splurge that made a lot of sense to us.

It just seems from what I've read here, there is a lot more trouble with the ovens in American ranges. It seems that the service can be more of a gamble too. If you search American Performer, you can read more. It is the closest in function to the RNB. It has star shaped uncapped burners like the RNB but with a semi sealed burner tray. It might be ok for a range top but I would not want the range. American also has ranges with capped and sealed burners and lower BTUs. Their DF has sealed and capped burners and a fairly simple oven, single fan, with only a standard bake and a true convection mode. There is very little in the manual so I would want to really see how it worked before I bought. If you don't have confidence in a local dealer for BS, consider buying from Trevor Lawson at Eurostoves. He takes excellent care of his customers and has helped some on this forum who did not buy from him.

I am getting a 48 inch gas range top. I have narrowed it down to the Miele with built in griddle (mostly because it matches the Miele Steam Oven and Miele microwave) or the Dacor all burner with removable griddle. I like the larger size grates on the Dacor. I wonder how useful the griddle is and how easy it is to keep clean.

I just bought a used 48" Dacor range. The larger oven door will not close completely. It stays open about 1" at the top. I took it apart and it seems that it has brand new hinges in it. Is it possible they purchased the wrong ones? How do I find the correct ones? Is there a way to confirm the model?