I looked at the Bertazonni but the oven was WAY too small for my liking, was like an Easy Bake oven. Other than that it looked like a decent range though. I think AJ Madison is probably not terribly far from you and they should have the NXR probably. What made me "finally" decide for sure on the NXR was when my wife & I drove down to Florida to visit friends we took a detour to Tampa where we saw the NXR in person. Looked great to us, hell of a lot better than ANYTHING we had been looking at in our price range. We had started looking for something around $900 or so and quickly decided that wasn't an option. So upped the limit to $1600, all we could find then was a Kenmore stove that seemed reasonable BUT, had sad little burners of which only ONE was actually decent power the rest were virtually useless, light little grates, light duty oven racks, no infrared broiler. Blah I thought there has to be something better than this, all the known nice stoves like the Blue Stars and Wolfs etc were plain out of the question because for the most part they were $1000+ over our stove budget that we had already raised twice as it was. I actually found a lot of my info on the NXR on GW, at the time several people had bought one and they all seemed to love them and I saw zero complaints. When we saw it at the place in Florida and the guy there was very helpful seemed pretty knowledgeable said he had sold quite a few of the NXR's and never had a complaint. He then pulled the oven door down and stood on it with all his weight (about 190#) one foot on each side of window to show how solid the door and hinges were. Then he said he could sell us one for $1799 delivered to the door I just shook his hand and said sold. Extra $200 for one hell of a lot better stove was worth it. IF you decide you can live without a storage drawer then I can guarantee you that you will not find a better stove for $2000 or less, at least not a brand new anyway. The washers hold the stainless rock solid to the wall so you never have to drill a hole in the stainless or glue it with adhesive or anything like that. Once we get our Granite counter top and tile back splash in it should look fairly decent.

We are delaying the redo of our kitchen until next winter. But I have decided it is the 24" Berta range for me. I've read everything I could find about it, and learned today that GWeb found the lost posts, including the Berta threads, so here I am reading again. The Berta's oven is a gas convection oven, from what I read in their literature. We have a Sharpe convection/microwave, and that fairly large and mid-powered electric oven cooks turkey the best we've ever eaten. I would use the Berta oven to cook breads mostly, and not very often. It was not mentioned anywhere else but in this thread that I could hold off on having a range hood for a Berta. I was positioning my Berta (already speaking that way yeah) to avoid any changes in the a/c ductwork, and reconfiguring my very small kitchen into a galley style. I could have a wide counter space, maybe 5 feet, to the left of the range, and maybe 15 inches to the right. The back door is not far away, so if venting a lot of hot air or smoke is necessary, the door could be opened. Later on I might go back and put in a vent over the range. When we stayed at a villa near Orvieto Italy, they had a Berta in the kitchen. I was very impressed with it. Andit was a 24" width. After that tripm I've been hooked on Italian style in so many areas.

ejbrymom, how were those light colored grates to keep clean? "Everyone" tells me to avoid them. It certainly limits the selection if I do. I don't "cook" like I used to so I don't want to spend thousands of dollars on a range.

Let me suggest a couple of possible choices that may work for the short term while still being re-usable when you do your kitchen remodel. First, that OTR microwave. I do not know what you mean by having a "long run" of venting, but older OTR units tended to have pretty wimpy fans. There are numbers of more capable units including a model by LG that has a 400 cfm fan as well as a panel that slides forward over the front of the stove to catch more of the heat and steam from pots on the front burners. Several folks here at GW have posted on using this unit with some suceesss (Nunyabiz and Luv2putt being two names that come to mind.) Second, when you have chosen a new stove, it seems you have a concern about heat from the stovetop going against the adjoining fridge. Something I might try as an interim solution that might help deflect cooktop heat would be fixing a sheet of frosted tempered glass to the side of the fridge. Give a glass shop the dimensions between your stovetop and the OTR-MW for height and the side of the fridge (for width). It will probably cost around $50 to $70. (I'm basing this on my recent cost for making a tempered glass backsplash behind my stove up to my range hood). You want the frosted side against the fridge. You could use silicon kitchen caulk for mounting it to the fridge. That should hold it until you can do whatever remodeling you eventually plan. It also eases some concerns about trying to get a gas stove with weak burners on the right side. (If you have a bit of space between your MW and the fridge, you might even be able to just slide in a framed, tempered glass shower door.) Third, it might help if you could be more specific about what did not impress when you looked at the LG, ELectrolux, GE Cafe and Bosch. Was it that you did not care for the stainless steel finishes r styling? Or that, maybe, the stoves have a lot of electronics and that is something you want to avoid? Something else? Spelling out your preferences will help us give you advice on stoves you might consider. For example, maybe you want something with a more "pro-style" look than you get with the stoves you mentioned, and, at the same time, you want something with minimal electronics, like your old Tappan. In that case, I might suggest that you look at the 30" NXR all gas stove. It has a design and stainless steel finish with a more industrial look than you get from GE, LG etc. While it has 15k btu-hr. burners, you do not have to run the right side burners at full blast. They run very well lower heat levels. (Some people claim to be able to melt chocolate on paper plates without burning the plate, though it is beyond me why you would want to do that.) It has a convection oven and an infra-red broiler. It has a very simple design so no problem running the stove-top during power outages. (BTW, there is practically nothing in the way of modern gas stoves whose ovens can be run without electrical power, though. The few that are available with that capability do not seem to be very highly thought of according to postings here at GW.) The NXR is carried by several major east-coast retailers from Phildelphia to Boston (including AJ Madison which was mentioned by SparklingWater) so you might be able to go look at one. The price is usually around $2k, so right in there with the stoves you were mentioning (and about $500 less than the GE Cafe.) Now, without knowing more about what you like and dislike, my recommendations might be helpful or completely useless to you.