Sometimes 1st world problems are hilarious. I have had an OTR for 15 years & never had any of the problems stated. I cook daily & can also. Small kitchens are the norm for most Americans. Worrying about resale is ridiculous. If someone would not buy my house because of an OTR MW, they can move along. I would also not like to squat to reach the lower MW. I am looking forward to the Whirlpool OTR MW when this one goes, more space & goes out further over the stove. JMHO

Has nothing to do with "1st world problems". This is a discussion of OTR microwave ovens, is it not?? Maybe you are in the wrong forum.

I would acknowledge that OTR is not preferred. I had one in our last house, and am used to it. In our new to us home we have one as well.I am used to it and like the convenience ( never had the dreaded spills)..... and space wise was the only real place for it.

I have a 10 year old OTR microwave which does a poor, almost non-existent, job of removing cooking odors. I am currently shopping for a range hood to replace it.

Shannon_WI Ok, yes, I'm not a moron but thanks for the comment :)

Seriously, though: if I could switch out the OTR of course I would. I've renovated a couple of houses and have no issue with this. I thought it was clear I mean a house in which there is an OTR and there is no reasonable space to put it elsewhere. Which is the case with a lot of infill homes here now: you can have a very large house, but a very small L shaped kitchen with limited space. Another deal breaker, actually, is the too-small fridge hole. I have a 34" fridge space and a shallow space between the fridge and the island, necessitating a french door model. Currently, there is only one (really lousy) Samsung model that fits. I thought it would be easy to enlarge the hole, but doing so requires changing out both upper and lower cabinets, flooring adjustments, pulling out the wood surround on the outer edge of the fridge, it's a major reno complicated by cabinet doors that are now hard to match.

Experience has taught me to look both at what I want to change, and what I can reasonably change in a house without breaking the bank.

So ya, OTR with little space to make the change, 100% deal breaker. There are tons of houses to choose from and I choose one I like to cook in. But really, why question someone else's choices or preferences? It's still useful to know what appeals to buyers if you plan to sell a house. I find this site very helpful for that.

OTR microwaves were completely out of date 10 years ago where I live. Unless the home is a kitchen gut job anyway buyers won’t consider a home with one.

Maybe OTR microwaves are not ideal but I see many real estate listings with OTR microwaves.

IMy last house sold in a matter of days, for a very nice price----- in a very very very nice area of very very very nice homes, most of which did have an OTR microwave. It was never an issue requiring a gut job.:)

I don't think an OTR is a deal breaker in a home sale BUT they are really out-dated. If I had a choice, & could put a small microwave somewhere (inside a cabinet w/a roll-out shelf) I'd opt for that.

San Francisco Bay Area is a hi-priced market (yes, I live here too, LOL). Since the OP said it would be costly to install a vented hood, then just stick with a new OTR.

Is it ideal for a serious cook? Absolutely not. I have an 850 cfm fan vented horizontally and in an open kitchen/LR/DR arrangement with a semi-decent stove (NOT a Bluestar, alas), it is BARELY adequate to keep odors down, altho it does a decent job with steam.

But for me to replace it with a proper vertically-drafted hood would be somewhere in the range of $5K - and that's without doing anything structural, just an extra tall chimney since I have a cathedral ceiling.

But it would involve removing a cabinet, repainting the wall, patching the ceiling, patching the roof, and making sure the new vent doesn't interfere with the solar panels on our roof (which are a lot more important than a vent hood of any type, since the solar is on NEM until 2035).

Labor costs are very, very high here. If you are not planning to stay in the home long-term, there is no way it is worth putting in upscale features that may not matter to half your potential buyers.

A very successful RE agent once gave us a really good tip. She said, "The eye of the buyer goes straight to the CHEAPEST thing in a room, and prices it from there. That's why consistent quality in appearance is so important!"

I love your last comment. We‘re in the process of buying a home that was built in the 80s and has had no updates. I keep telling people “At least it’s consistently out of date and consistently grubby.” Somehow, that to me is a positive characteristic.

OTR MW are really just a MW with a low quality exhaust. They really cant provide the proper air movement especially with a gas cooktop. Realistically, there are other options instead of a MW. CSO or a combo convection and MW if you cant live without it. What did most people make with a OTR - popcorn, reheating leftovers and coffee

Hate mine in my summer home. I'm so glad to hear that they're going away. I'm redoing my regular home's kitchen, and will have an open shelf below a counter for one.

They are not "going away".

For much of the world, they were never here.

A countertop microwave works better and is easy to replace.

Except many of us don't have enough countertop space as it is, so an OTR is what it is!

Cadyren -- Counter space is often an issue (it is for me too). I did two things to help. First I installed a Rachiele copper sink so the prep-work is always in the sink rather than on a counter. Second I added a mobile cart. (The kitchen is way too small for an island.)

Kitchen · More Info

My home was a two week old stale listing- all the tour comments mentioned the outdated look of the brand new kitchen with the giant OTR. . I bought it below asking price and did the renovation myself. Its all about what local market expectations are.

We’ve always lived in city condos in hot metro areas (Boston, now DMV) and I honestly don’t understand the hate! Clearly if you have a SFH with a large kitchen an OTR doesn’t make sense. If it’s already there, removing and replacing with a hood isn’t a huge deal - we did this in our first condo that had a lot of available counter space, however a recirculating hood isn’t any better than the microwave fan so in our new condo we kept the OTR as we are dealing with a much smaller kitchen.

Even though we bought our current house to tear it down, so zero dollars was our improvement budget, the OTR microwave had to go. (Especially when it spontaneously ignited.)

Cooking fumes contain carcinogenic and mutagenic compounds that cause small airway obstruction, impaired pulmonary function and increased mortality from airway disease. *

Just another first world problem indeed!

The reason a lot of over the counter microwaves don’t vent well is because:

1. The vent wasn’t hooked up,
2. The contractor never installed a vent to the outside (an exhaust either into the attic or out through the roof) - many just exhaust into the kitchen. Lazy contractors!
   I know we have installed many microwaved in older homes. New model microwaves have adequate but noisy vent fans.

Is it a moot point? I renovate older houses and I'm working on a 2-1 of around 900 sf. The 40's kitchen is cute but tiny w/ hardly any counter space. I was planning on a vented OTR but my agent dropped this bomb on me: Young people don't use microwaves! She says that air fryers have taken over so I should not bother w/ a microwave at all. Really?

"Young people don't use microwaves! She says that air fryers have taken over so I should not bother w/ a microwave at all. Really?"

I'm an old person, and I haven't used a microwave in over 10 years. Unfortunately, I have one now over the range, but because of the backsplash, I can't get rid of it and replace it with a real exhaust hood until I redo the entire area. It hangs there unused, looking ugly.

I know I said 3 years ago that it would be a deal breaker for me, but in the intervening years it was superseded by a new deal breaker: a charging spot for my electric car.

Houseworx

I think you should start a new thread asking the question about younger people not using microwaves at all and instead using air fryers. I can't quite figure this one out since I don't know how you reheat food in an air fryer, and I think the primary use a lot of people have for a microwave is reheating.

FWIW we're in the midst of a remodel and I did everything I could think of not to have to have an OTC microwave. But, in the end, with a small townhouse kitchen I am ending up with one anyway. I just couldn't come up with a viable alternate spot. We can't have real outside venting either, so a true hood wouldn't do us much good. And, I am buying a GE Advantium that I can also use as an extra oven if I need one.

The first eight years of living by myself, there was no MW in my apartment. I decided that I'll go out and buy one the first time I need it. That day never came.

So, I absolutely can understand living without a microwave and only using an air fryer.

Also, if you can't figure out how to patch your backsplash, get a custom cut piece of stainless steel and attach on top of the existing finishes. That entire project can be done DIY for less than $100

"I can't quite figure this one out since I don't know how you reheat food in an air fryer," In doing research on this question I ran across an article saying that the young folks don't reheat - they just throw away. So, these "save the world" generations don't even save leftovers! :-)

Me, I'm a single guy and I do 90% of my cooking in a microwave, toaster oven, and on 2 range burners.

My apartment had a basic 24" range, and no other cooking appliance. It's a far cry from my amazing well-equipped kitchen these days. But I cooked entire Thanksgiving meals in there. And yes, I figured out how to reheat left overs using the tools at my disposal.

I love my fancy kitchen, but if that's not an option, a good (home) chef can still make great food. It just takes a little planning and maybe a little more time.

That was ok when I was single, but with a busy family, I very much appreciate modern conveniences.

I use a microwave a lot - reheating leftovers for lunch, thawing frozen food, nuking potatoes before oven roasting them, cooking bacon, etc. I could do all these things without a microwave, but the convenience factor is significant for me. The air fryer, from what I've seen, is simply a another convenience item, but with less versatility, so I'd go for the microwave before the air fryer if space were limited. That said, I'd never even heard of an OTR microwave before stumbling onto Houzz, and they are definitely not a "thing" here in Australia. I've never seen one in this country.

You don't have up over down under?

Nah, we're too busy hanging on to Earth by our fingernails down here to worry about OTR's .

I am interested to hear others who are not in support of MWs, either.

I have never had an OTR MW, only a countertop model. When that went south, I never replaced it and I find that I have absolutely zero need for a MW.

The only thing I ever did with the MW was to reheat and to make baked potatoes. I have found that I can reheat things just as easily and better by using my iron skillets. I even found a way to make a baked potato without using a MW or the oven.

I have never liked the OTR ones as they seem to be too low to the stove top and they are too high for me to get a good grip on whatever is in there. And, it requres reaching over a potentially hot stove top, at that.

Yesterday I was removing quart jars from a hot water canning process and it occured to me once again why an OTR MW would not be a welcomed obstacle.

I would much prefer to leave my hood vent with a pretty respectable fan in it, rather than a MW that just filtered. I also use my exhaust fan to draw hot air off the cook top when the AC is on.

What are all of you folks using your MW for? I am serious when I say that I never found much use for one other that reheating things. And you have to be careful about heating some things in the MW. It can destroy delicate things and I would never put a baked item in one to heat.

Since countertop space is limited in my kitchen, I am perfectly happy to NOT have a MW. For me it presented such a limited use and occupied valuable space.

One the main negative features of an OTR MW is the fact that it makes it so high. I have used them at the homes of others and it seems to not be too diffiucult to spill something hot onto yourself if you lose a grip or if you have liquid that may slosh around and become unwieldy. . I guess tall people have an advantage with this. If you are short or getting old, or an immature child it can be a real hazard. Not only will it have your reaching upwards, it will also have you reaching upwards across a potentially hot range top or open flame from the gas burner.

Also, I got tired of scurbbing it out so often. No matter, it just seemed to get dirty and a MW will hold odors. Think of all those dirty MWs in break rooms at work venues, in normal times. Ugh!!

I suspect that most use them for reheating or for using some of those convienence foods that come prepackaged for direct MW use, such as popcorn. I cant justify that limited use against the awkwardness and occupying of precious space.

Pyrex did a survey in 2020, although the article that I read is UK based, "according to a new poll by cookware brand Pyrex, Millennials throw away the equivalent of 633 meals a year because they don't know how to reheat food aka use a microwave. The research found that people aged 18 to 34 (so also some of Generation Z then), waste more than three times as much food as people over 34 with 23% of Millennials admitting they don't know how to deal with leftovers." https://graziadaily.co.uk/life/in-the-news/millennial-tea/

Now before the Silent, Boomer generation, and even my generation, the Gen X, throw their arms up about wasting food - we all do it in our own ways. Whether it's not picking the pretty food at the store, throwing away food that turns ugly at home, letting leftovers go bad and more. Bottom line food wasting is bad whether it's a farmer dumping milk or produce because they can't get it to market, consumers not taking care of their own inventory, or us killing the Earth.

TV didn't kill the radio. Air fryers (or millennials) did not kill microwaves.

Food waste is a horrible problem, so support your local food rescue organization (I hope you have one! They're awesome charities).

I've never had an OTR microwave. Mine have always been placed on the countertop. My current kitchen is the smallest kitchen I've ever owned. The microwave sits kiddy corner in one of the corners of my U-shaped kitchen. I like the function of pulling things out of the microwave with a landing space immediately in front. You have more space in front when the MW is placed in the corner. I always thought that I might put the microwave away for parties, but I never do. Perhaps I would put the MW away if selling a house to make the kitchen look uncluttered and bigger. Built in MWs are more expensive to install and replace, so that's another consideration. I prefer free-standing appliances for that reason and for keeping life simple. My daughter has an aging built in kitchen with appliances failing. Trying to replace appliances has been a real pain without a full kitchen remodel which is not in her budget right now.

I don't think it's a matter of "fashion," but rather of practicality. That said, we have an OTR which I use for storage as we keep a more convenient microwave on the counter. I'm short, and removing hot items from eye-level isn't very safe. I'd have to stand on a stool to clean it. We have a tiny kitchen, so it's a real sacrifice to devote such a large chunk of space to a countertop micro. If I could actually have that space for other use, I would think I'd hit the jackpot.

Nevertheless, a family member is lobbying to get this 10" Kitchen Aid (even higher opening than standard OTR, but better looking). It has 2 fans, max 500 cfm. Basically $1,000. How much do hoods cost? The last time we looked at vent hoods they stuck out too much and were too low, under cabinets.

KitchenAid 1.1 cu. ft. Over the Range Low Profile Microwave Hood Combination in Stainless Steel-KMLS311HSS - The Home Depot

I am reading through of all these comments for guidance because I do not like the look of the gigantic OTR microwave.

The hood substitute for the mat same spot may not be any better aesthetically.

I considered the shorter microwave that whirlpool puts out, 10” length), but the depth comes out more.

I wish their were more pictures to see that showed solutions.

Oh, and why not just use the stove top or oven to reheat? It’s maybe 10 minutes v 2.🤨

There are many different shapes and sizes of hoods.  I'm sure you can find one that looks (and works) better than an OTR.

Depends on how you cook. I cook a lot and find the microwave invaluable, not only for reheating. I steam veggies, keep foods warm, melt butter, cheese or chocolate, make sauces, and of course reheat. Having it over the stove gives me an easy place to set a hot dish, it’s up and out of the way of my grandchildren. Also it doesn’t rob my kitchen of precious cabinet space - as a matter of fact I have a cabinet over it. So if you don’t have a ginormous kitchen, you cook for a family multiple times a day, I think you should consider it. Easy to clean too - I don’t have to bend over. If some arbitrary trend in aesthetics is important go for the under-the-counter or no microwave if you don’t cook. Kitchens can be functional and beautiful! Whatever you decide will be the right choice for you!

Just finished a small condo U-shaped kitchen and installed an otr microwave. It looks nice, practical and no regrets.

I hate OTR microwaves. Hate them with the passion of a thousand suns. Did I mention that I hated them? (LOL...)

I have one in my beach house. It came that way with the house. I despise that thing. It doesn't vent for carp, plus I'm short and one of these days I'm going to dump a pot of boiling something on my stupid little head. Plus I think they just don't look as nice as a pretty, actually functionally-useful vent hood.

I wouldn't go so far as to say I'd never buy a house with one (because clearly I did) - but words fail to describe how much I hate it. I'm hoping to reno the kitchen before we move down there full time and that sucker will be the first thing to go.

Have a counter microwave in my primary house. Far prefer that to the ugly OTR death machine. However it's totally fine with me if you love yours. Different strokes and all that. :)

When I had my kitchen renovated a few years ago I chose a powerful range hood vented to the outside, and had a microwave shelf installed in the middle of my upper cabinets ( on the other side of my kitchen). This way I would have full use of my galley style kitcken countertops. The shelf is big enough to accommodate my Panosonic microwave: 22” wide, 11” high, 18” deep.
You should do whatever works for you.

I have never understood the whole having a microwave over a stove, definitely an American thing as it was certainly never in fashion in the UK. It just seems very dangerous to me, reaching over what could be a boiling hot stove top. Also, it must be so awkward to lift heavy plates and dishes up high and then in and out of the microwave, it risks piping hot food or liquids overflowing.
Plus it doesn’t look pretty, they’re big and bulky. Counter top is so much better and neater.

As a fellow Brit, I’m don’t see that an OTM is any worse, safety wise, than the grills that were built into the top of the range in the UK - same basic location. Those were pretty common when I was growing up.

We don‘t use the microwave for major meal prep. Only for heating leftovers and making popcorn. over the range was the best place to put it. we recently switched the old one with a ’low profile’ microwave. prettier and better ventalation.

History of the Over the range microwave:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5r1SD5Q65GI

Thanks for the link, Blair Burns, that was interesting. I love the styling of the turquoise 1962 Americana range -- so chic for its day. Makes me wonder if GE will eventually make double oven ranges with an Advantium speed oven for the small top oven. Maybe I can sell them that idea, lol!

On second thought, having an Advantium in the upper oven would just be a variation on the dreaded oven/mw combo oven, where you have an expensive problem when the microwave fizzles out but the oven is still going strong.

I too really am not at all fond of OTR microwaves, but I installed one this week. I have a small kitchen, and after investigating EVERY possible option for placement of the microwave I ended up with it over the range.

Some factors that came into play for me in making the decision that it is the best possible option for my kitchen. 1. We have an induction range. 2. We only use the microwave for reheating leftovers. 3. We can't do outside venting, so this is as good as any other recirculating option. 4. We decided we wanted an Advantium as an extra oven option. I don't have room for the Advantium wall oven, so the microwave Advantium works for us. 5. We don't have kids who will be using the microwave.

Everyone's situation and kitchen is different.

I have a small kitchen and I just bought an OTR microwave, and I love it. I had to pay an electrician to put in a dedicated line and outlet in the upper cabinet, and I bought a Maytag OTR microwave which has a crisper function and melts butter 8 ways, and does everything but stand on it's head. My hood fan which I removed, had a wall vent installed, and I hooked the microwave up to that, and it is wayyyyyy better at removing exhaust than the hood fan. This microwave has 2 speeds of a venting fan. I cooked a turkey in the oven a couple of days ago, for 4 hours and this is the first time I did not have to turn the heat off in my home due to the great exhaust capabilities of this OTR microwave. Times have changed; microwaves are wayyyy better. Why would I want a vent fan when this space can have double function as a microwave and a vent fan? In review, I think I wouldn't like an OTR microwave if me or my family was short, but we are not short. I am also thinking about putting in a bar with bar stools, but I wouldn't do that if we were short either. Maybe when I sell my house, I will keep it off the market for short people (just kidding).

We don't have a microwave over the oven but i know I wouldn't like it on a normal basis just because I'm short and anytime I've used one it's been harder for me to reach and see the food inside.

As for not having one, I do but I reheat most of my leftovers in the oven unless I'm in a hurry or unless it's soup or something liquid. It tastes way better, at least to me. The only thing I ever really use the microwave for is if I need something heated quickly, which isn't often, or to heat milk up for hot cocoa. Haha.