American Range, If you are interested I would call them directly to see about local sales and service 888-753-9898.Their website does not update regularly. Maybe every two years. Nobody "needs" anything more than a $1K gas range. Virtually everybody can use the power AND evenness of a powerful open burner. Thermador 18k btu star burners are pretty good, better than most standard sealed burners, but American Range and Bluestar are in a different category. When boiling water it is obvious power is good but when frying high power is also helpful. When you drop cold food into hot oil it drops the temp so you are paraboiling and your food is absorbing oil instead of the oil crisping the outside and simply cooking the inside with energy/heat transfer. Searing, sautéing, and woking also much improved. You sear steak carmalized brown/black without grey meat. Woking without making your veggies mush boiling in water released by the vegetables themselves. Which brings me to my next recommendation up the price scale Bluestar RNB. About 1k more than AR but has continuous grates and is able to take a full pan sheet as well. If AR is off the options list for about $3k is GE Café 30" gas range. These are made in Mexico and have circuit boards or "computers." Next downs is NXR. Chinese company and Chinese made. Allegedly they buy many premium components from Europe and North America, ship them to China, assemble them with Chinese made frames and sheet metal then ship them back to America for $2k retail. Several fan threads on these ranges on GW. I have my doubts but you can read those threads yourself and come your own conclusion. If you want a rec for a $1.5k range without convection. Frigidaire Gallery Series FGGF301DNF double oven with one 17k btu and one 9.5k btu burner. Probably can find for a few hundred under $1.5k.

Oh thank you all so much for your responses!! It's so helpful... sara the brit: do you have photos of your Ikea corner cab? akchicago- I did consider a corner sink, but I REALLY want to be able to look out to my garden from the sink :) live_wire_oak- I do need to talk with the KD at my cabinet supplier, I know. She is great. But since we're waiting for bids back from the carpenters and haven't as yet totally finalized the space available, I don't want to waste her time yet. (She had completely hammered out our old layout back in January, and then...with advice from this forum... we decided to move the kitchen to a whole different room! So all her work on previous layout was for nought, and I don't want to make her start again till we're sure about the new layout.) It's a difference of 6" on one leg and 18" on the other, which make a lot of difference in our tight layout! I am HOPING to have the numbers this week (it has been 2 weeks already and not knowing what plan we can afford is just killing me!) and then I'll meet with the KD again. Again, thanks to ALL of you who responded, it is unbelievably helpful to get this input. These things are really major splurges for us and I really don't want to spend extra $$ if I don't have to! I will post the layout in a sec after I scan it. Stacey

I have a 36" cooktop over a 27" oven. The oven isn't actually in a cabinet proper: it sits on the plywood base built by my GC for all the cabinets, and then he created a face panel, with the appropriate size hole for the oven, and had it sprayed to match my cabinets. There's a fair bit of panel on either side of the oven, but I really don't mind: I didn't want those spice pull-outs, and wondered about making a couple of 3" tray slots, but realised the space needed internally for the hinges would make it pretty awkward to use, and I decided that offsetting the oven and getting 6" for a cabinet would look strange (in MY kitchen - that's a personal thing). So, I'm happy with my panels. I got my tray cabinet in another place in the end. I think you have to decide for yourself whether you want/need symmetry on that wall, or whether you can live without using that space for anything. In my case, it also means any subsequent owner can opt for a larger oven if they want to.

Practigal- cleaning the grout is no different than if there wasn't a feature tile. The only other thing I can think of that would require less work cleaning is a stainless panel. I also didn't know arabesque was so popular!! I thought I was on to something unique ;)