advisor: I am not sure about your post but I will respond. I talked at length with Al when I got my Caldera. My DS and DIL both graduated from NECI and used Caldera at the culinary school. It is how I found out about the product. They are made perfectly and perform year in and year out flawlessly. They are extremely well made and make all other expensive brands look pale in comparison. People are paying huge bucks for Blue Star and Culinarian and French brands and my made in the USA gas cooktop out performs them in all ways. Of course this is my opinion only based on the performance we have had and the skilled chefs we have using the equipment and of course the perfect food we prepare year in and year out...look at the pics ! You are wrong on all counts concerning no grilling or high heat/pro cooking. You are also wrong about the venting. The lowest speed is so quiet and powerful on the Tradewind that we use it for everything but the stirfry and grilling. For those we use medium. The point of " more than you need" in cfm's is due to the law of physics that causes the air to actually recirculate and come back of you have too much turbulence in the duct, this can happen on high. So you get more than you need and use it on slightly less....the cost of more cfm's is actually very little and this solves all ventilation problems. dee: you are correct about an inline silencer...they are cheap and work perfectly, I have one. But you are wrong about the hugely expensive Blue Star and Culinarian. It is way overprices and not needed. If a person gets the Caldera , which is still available and a good double oven they will do so well. Have work areas in 2 different places and way way less money. JMHO....c

How old are your appliances? Are parts still available to repair them? We weren't so lucky when our old oven died. Our wonderful repair guy tried to find the part to repair it but he said it wasn't made anymore and he couldn't find it for sale on EBay or Craigslist (I tried as well). However, I don't regret waiting 2 years after my oven died to get a 30" oven when we remodeled. We got by with the cook top, toaster oven (very nice Breville model, $250), turkey roaster and crockpot all year, and the grill during nice weather. DH and I plan to stay in our home until we can't manage the stairs anymore (hopefully a long time from now) so it was worth it to us to deal with short-term inconvenience until we could get what we wanted. How long do you plan to stay in your home? IMO, this is another factor in what you choose to do. If your appliances are too old to be repaired when they die and you have your heart set on a 30" wall oven, check Craigslist and EBay to see if you can find a decent used 27" oven to tide you over until you can afford to remodel and get a 30" oven. I advise against a MW/oven combo, as do most GWers. If one appliance dies, you have to replace the whole unit, not just the the oven or MW. Combos are cheaper initially but they could prove more costly in the long run. btw, a built-in MW oven will always have the bigger-on-the-outside-but-smaller-on-the-inside look. It's not meant to take the place of a double oven (2 full size, regular ovens). It's a MW with an additional cook function. HTH!

While I LOVE your antique cabinets, if removing them gives you the space for an island with proper aisle widths, do it. The only issue I'm aware of with a DW across the aisle from the sink is dripping on the floor. So the type of flooring you are using may be a consideration. If someone doesn't wipe up any large drips, will it cause spotting on your floor? Or make it slippery so someone would slip? Maybe a nice throw-rug in that area would solve that problem? Just stuff to consider. If there are other problems with that arrangement, hopefully someone pipes in. You may find that with drawers on a all or most of the lowers, you gain enough storage that you don't need all those uppers. Drawers in an island may especially make that difference. We just found that out for ourselves in our slow-going, DIY remodel. We added two 24" drawer units. All the contents for 48" of uppers fit into one of the 24" drawer units. Yes, ALL, with space left over. So we had an entire drawer stack empty until we did some other re-arranging of things (emptied some things from my blind corner, Yay!). Drawers hold so much more stuff. It was rather shocking to me how much more the drawers held. And more convenient to access, too. Because of that, we decided to remove the uppers because they crowded the window and it looks so much better now. We have decided to put narrow 6" shelves there instead of those bulky-looking uppers and go with something like the photo to store some basics like flour, beans, other grains, etc., in jars for easy access, with just a few drinking glasses (as one end of the shelves is near the fridge) and decorative items. Although we will be doing floating shelves to keep the side view uncluttered, because our window is on the long side of the L while the shelves are on the short side of the L so our side view is important. In your kitchen, I think shelves just like pictured would look awesome. To be honest, I'm surprised I'm doing this as I haven't been much of an open shelves fan in kitchens but I think as long as there is uniformity in what you put on them and they are kept relatively uncluttered, it is a good, workable solution. So, yeah, add a real island with drawers and I'm sure you'll find you can eliminate or minimize whatever upper cabinets you really need.

Thanks for the input, all. Some answers to posted questions: nhoblitt-- interesting idea, but I think the labor investment would be substantial, as would the associated delays (would have to be disassembled, brought back to the shop, drawers cut down, refinished...). live_wire_oak-- island is 4' 2" wide, with the cabinet portion being 5'10" long, and the open portion being 7' 2" long. There was ample material in the slab to work with, as shown in this templating photo, which I will try to post, to follow. The fabricator recognizes the error. Joseph-- There's no steel, but there is a lot of wood support underneath-- a bunch of joists, effectively, running lengthwise. Can't remember how closely spaced they are, but there's a lot of support there. lapsangtea-- I think my main concern is functionality. Most of the prep in our current kitchen is done on an island that has an overhang of 1/4"-- enough to get a hand or paper towel under the edge to brush debris into, but we had consciously kept the overhang minimal due to much more constrained spaces than we will have in the new kitchen. It would be nice to have a bit more than 1/4". I can probably get used to the look. I think it's frustrating because it is such a huge investment; we've jumped through a lot of hoops to make it happen (eg the original search and patient wait for slabs, the scramble to find replacement slabs under the gun to keep things moving, while juggling work, a toddler, an infant, the rest of a huge remodel, etc); and now a seemingly silly error that leaves it less than the very well-thought out space that we (including architect and contractor) have planned. barncatz- yes, we've talked to the contractor and the fabricator (at least the guy doing the work; the bosses are out of town for the holiday). Everyone recognizes that it was an error. They've put the ball in my court to decide what to do next.