We ended up delaying our project, but plan to get two individual wall units (oven and microwave) in matte white and stack them. It's quite a bit more pricey, but it also seems the individual units have better features than the combo. We're also beginning to lean more towards cabinets that have a little color, maybe green or blue. Cabinets that aren't white/grey will probably enhance the look of the matte white finish (we got the Fridge and Dishwasher in matte white already).

[FYI: DELAYS on Cafe appliances are due to a chip shortage. It is not a problem with the GE/Cafe.] We have the Cafe white microwave and refigerator...LOVE THEM!!! (We are ordering the stove/oven soon. It will complete this space for sure!!) We ordered our refrigerator in March of 2021 and it arrived in March of 2022. Our microwave was in stock and was delivered and installed w/in a week. Our walls are SW Alabaster and our cupboards are SW Snow Bound. Our dishwasher is located in the island, which is painted Black, and we will also be ordering the black matte dishwasher.

To those who asked: Yes….You can easily remove the copper cuff from the handle. We bought stainless Wolf/Sub-Zero/Cove appliances with “Pro“ handles for our kitchen, but wanted the amazing Cafe Advantium microwave (with Pro handles) for the coffee bar area in the kitchen. We do love the Advantium. However, we were disappointed the emblem/cuff was copper instead of stainless, and there isnt even a stainless cuff option available for special order. The company claims this copper cuff was intentionally designed & ”jewelry inspired”. The copper cuff clashed with our other Pro handles, so we removed the cuff in five minutes with two allen wrenches. Looks much better now and matches our other appliance handles. Monogram/Cafe should offer the option of a discrete stainless cuff. Not everyone wants ”jewelry” on their appliance handles.

We had a bad experience. Our dishwasher was broken on arrival. It didn't work right out of the box. It smelled like mold. Repairing it was a nightmare. It took over a month. Here are some warnings/things I wish I had known based on our experience: 1. You may not be able to return your dishwasher due to it being defective or non-operational. If your dishwasher is—like ours was—defective right out of the box, the procedure for resolving that issue is for GE to send out technicians to repair it, often using parts that themselves are not new and may require weeks to arrive. You can only return your faulty dishwasher AFTER the technician declares it unserviceable. How many months of hand-washing your dishes will that take? 2. Cafe’s return policy ONLY applies to dishwashers purchased directly on their website. If you buy it through a designer for a discount, you may be (like we were) completely ineligible for a return. If you do buy it from the website, you are given a 7-day return policy (in which you need to pay for return shipping) or 30 days in which you can return it for store credit minus a 25% restocking and pickup fee. And after 30 days, your dishwasher is unreturnable and unreplaceable. In the event your dishwasher is defective, it could take you (as it took us) 2-4 WEEKS to get a technician to even look at your dishwasher. This means that, BY THE TIME A TECHNICIAN ARRIVES TO TELL YOU YOUR DISHWASHER IS DEFECTIVE, IT MAY ALREADY BE TOO LATE TO RETURN IT. Catch-22. 3. Service quality is disappointing. Cafe uses subcontractors to deal with service calls. If your dishwasher breaks down or is defective, this means that you may be dealing with a company that is slow, unreliable in showing up for appointments, and may have technicians who are not knowledgeable. As was the case with our technician (from RR appliance in Miami), they may have NEVER EVEN SEEN a Cafe dishwasher before. And these are technicians who were scheduled through Cafe’s own customer service department. 4. Cafe ONLY stands by its product for 1 year after purchase. After that, your warranty expires. Given that there seems to be quality control issues, if you aspire to have a working dishwasher for, say 6 years, you will probably want to price into your purchase the cost of an extended warranty. At the time of this review, the cost for a 5-year warranty from Assurant (…it starts after your factory warranty expires) is $457.75. 5. And…while we are on the topic of extra costs, it may be helpful to price in the cost to you of a dishwasher that is non-operational because you are waiting for a technician to arrive or for parts to get shipped in. In our case, we had to hand wash dishes for over a month before we were able to successfully run a single load in our brand-new, right-out-of-the-box dishwasher. That is 1/12 OF THE ENTIRE WARRANTEE LIFE of the product that we spent hand washing dishes because Cafe/GE doesn’t have the infrastructure it needs to provide fast, efficient service for its products. On the plus side, it is a beautiful-looking dishwasher. And if you (like we did) got it with the matching fridge, range, and microwave, you are pretty much stuck with it.