Hi Kayla - overall I like the dual fuel range. My husband loves the digital meat thermometer that came with it and we've made the best prime rib roasts since we've gotten this oven. The pre-heat does take awhile but we've gotten used to it. I've made cookies and they turn out great. We have also started using the lower oven more if we're baking something in a shallow dish, frozen garlic bread, rolls and etc. because it doesn't take as long to heat up. We've used the griddle to make sandwiches and pancakes and I'm happy with how that works and the easy clean up. I would say the stove top is easy to scratch if you aren't careful when you clean around the burners. Make sure you lift the grates up, off and set aside to clean and not just lift the front of the grates so you can wipe underneath. You'll scratch the little raised lip on the back of the stove top with the burner grates. I'm still not crazy about the overall height of the stove top but that's not really a fault. My husband on the other hand (6'2" tall) LOVES the dual range and all of it's features. He would highly recommend it to everyone. I like it. We also bought the matching over the range microwave. We bought it because you can bake in it and I thought we would really use that feature a lot but have found it takes a really long time to pre-heat the oven feature of the microwave and you have to use this little round raised baking rack which I have very few dishes that will fit, actually none now that I think about it. I thought it would be more like my old toaster/convection oven that sat on my counter top and it's really not at all. For the most part we just use the microwave to re-heat and warm things. I hope this helped

FWIW, I have a Wolf AG at home and a DCS AG at our vacation home, both installed in the past two years, and I prefer the Wolf. DCS makes a very nice, solid product but I prefer the open burner flame pattern on the Wolf and seem to have better heat/flame control when I'm cooking on the Wolf because of the burner design. That being said, DCS may have a slightly lower simmer and the stainless top is IMO slightly easier to keep clean. The Wolf's black enameled steel top takes more polishing in order to keep it looking pristine. I also like Wolf's heaver grates. The ovens and broilers seem to perform comparably. You should find dealers who have these models hooked up to gas lines so that you can compare burners/flame patterns, etc., for yourself. Bluestar also has an awesome open burner flame pattern and more btu's but their service is iffy in parts of the US, including mine. DCS and Wolf both seem to offer widespread excellent customer service. I bought my 30" DCS AG for around $3300. Wolf was a bit more but worth it IMO for the open burners. The front panel on my DCS seems to get hotter than the Wolf when the oven's in use.

Usually the diameter of the hood matches the range and the cfms required are determined by a formula (there was a chart here with that info long ago -- anyone have it?) that calculates the length of the duct run, room size I believe and one or two other factors. Getting it right is not arbitrary or merely a matter of opinion. An overpowered hood sucks too much air out of the room and becomes inefficient. Going too wide risks ventilating your counters. A good quality, efficient hood with cfms appropriate to the range type will be optimal. Femmelady's kitchen shows that perfectly. She has a pro range with an indoor grill plus a 24" wok stove next to it. I think they went with a 900 or 1200 cfm VAH and a photo she posted showed it drawing out the grill smoke -- even installed extra high as her husband is tall. Here's a link. Surely there are enough hood styles that one can be found to look good with the cabinets. I'd be much more concerned with technical issues, a good brand and proper ventilation calculus, especially if you plan to go with a high-powered range and one of the monster gas ovens. Here is a link that might be useful: femmelady's hood install

>>> would a recirculating hood such as a Broan cbd330 make much of a difference in grease and odors vs no hood at all?<<< >>>I also know what CO is and why I should care about it.<<< >>>Our house is old and far from airtight.Is my hunch that this recirculating hood won't do much good right? Would it mitigate eau de cabbage stew any better than cracking a few windows?<<< My initial reactions to using that Broan without venting to the outside are these: that your Broan may help a bit with some aerosolized cooking grease (although the hood design means that a lot will not be captured); that the Broan may serve as a surface for condensing vapor but will be otherwise ineffective in dealing with vaporous combustion byproducts and steam, much less the odor/stench of boiled cabbage; and that it will do nothing about CO which you should not need to worry about, anyway. For removing odors when boiling cabbage etc., you might have better luck with the windows, particularly if you can toss-in a box fan or window fan for those occasions. CO emissions from modern gas ranges should be barely detectable with sophisticated equipment -- far below hazard levels --- unless somebody has really screwed with your burner adjustments The combustion byproducts from the burners are rather more smoglike with the principal components being CO2 and NO2. The Dept. of Energy in conjunction with the EPA published a study on air quality in kitchens with "unvented" gas ranges and the effectiveness of realtively affordable venting a couple of years ago. The result was some overblown media attention. It also got some interesting commentary here which you can find at this link if you are interested: http://ths.gardenweb.com/discussions/2304651/ny-times-the-kitchen-as-a-pollution-hazard The idea of getting a convertible hood and later installing outside venting is not a bad one. I'm guessing that you are not currently venting because your stove currently sits on an interior wall and you all have been stumped on how to get outside venting without a full kitchen remodel to relocate the stove. Is that correct? That's a problem I had with my old-house kitchen and I discovered numbers of relatively easy ways to go up from a vent and run ducting over to the nearest exterior wall through a cabinet. This was easy for me because the interior wall behind my stove butted into an exterior wall and because I didn't mind the somewhat industrial look of the ducting. Might or might not be that easy for your old house-kitchen and the look might or might not work for you. Having said that, the 30" Broan cbd330 may not be the best choice. It seems to be a low-rise hood which does not project very far out from the wall, and it has a flat base rather than a canopy. As kas has often pointed out, an actual canopy gives better coverage and capture and can be a significant part of the effectiveness of a range hood. Even better when the hood extends a bit wider than the stove. (Better still when the hood also has enough depth to extend as far out as the front of the stove, too.) Basically, the flat base on the Broan means that the unit depends entirely on fan-power to collect vapors, grease, and etc., The Broan has relatively low fan capacity. (250 CFM?) You might want to consider taking that unit back and swapping it for something with a canopy and, if it will fit, something 36" wide. Again, that may or may not work in your kitchen. My old-house kitchen was such that I also had to resort to a low-rise hood with a flat bottom rather than a canopy. We work with the kitchens we have.