jmith, thank you AGAIN! I really appreciate your posts :-) Uh...where does the air make-up unit go?? Breezygirl, wow, thank you for your thoughtful and reasoned post! Yes, upon reflection, an underccounter oven would not be good for my back. I was thinking that maybe I would only use the second oven for parties and holidays, but sometimes we have friends over every weekend. Good point about the cost of separate ovens. I do like the look of double ovens, too. Especially the Bosch 800 series and the Kenmore Pro, but it is very hard to find anything on them...few mixed reviews online. I will ask on this forum. And do some research on Electrolux as well, since they seem to be popular here. I saw the Wolf cooktop at Great Indoors. My mother has a Wolf range, but she hates to cook. Lol. OK, will also look for the Capital. Hadn't heard of it until this forum. Yes, found ajmadison and HomeEverything. HomeEverything has slightly better prices, and usually free shipping. Yes, you're right, I couldn't find a published price on the GE Monogram counter-depth anywhere. I have to call or email each site to get the price, and from what you and the GI saleslady said, there probably won't be much difference except for no tax if I buy online. I have accepted that I can't vent with an OTR MW. I will have to spring for an undercabinet hood. Bleah. $1400. Ugh. Loss of cabinet space. Boo. I am thinking that, since I was planning for stacked 42" + !2" or 36" + 18", I will have to mount the MW under a cabinet...h'mmm...maybe I will have to do a mullion door on a 36" or 42", since the 12" or 18" are supposed to be mullion? Thought briefly about putting MW in island, but kids are 6 and 10 and tall, too. LOVE the Kitchens forum. Haven't posted my floor plan yet, trying to get up the courage to post pics of my truly UGLY kitchen. It doesn't look as bad or difficult on the floor plan as it does in the pictures Will check with contractor. Presumably he is up on all this stuff. Never heard of MUA until cooksnsews mentioned it! The GE Monogram ZFSB25DXSS is currently $3825 @ Great Indoors, on sale. I liked it bc it is 25 cu ft and well-planned inside. It looks.like close to the same amount of space that we have in our KA Superba, which we bought 9 years ago and has never given us a problem. I will look at KA fridges, thank you! I need the MW drawer money for the undercabinet hood. Boo. But the fridge isn't in my appliance budget, anyway. Lol.

Ha a post calling me out! I've gone too deep! Anyway regarding the oven... I LOVE IT! It bakes so evenly. I have a gas 36 bert oven in my range which is nice but for baking and easy stuff I use the wall oven. The dual heating elements are great, but you have to keep it pretty clean since it's not self cleaning otherwise you'll have a smoke problem when using the bottom heating unit. The convection is great, and it blows some "warm" air back into the room which makes gives the kitchen a warm feeling, the gas oven does this too. The reason I bought this over a lot of other options was mainly because of the fact that is has knobs instead of a digital display. I haven't used any of the electronic features on it honestly so I can't speak to that. I just set it and watch my food cook. The ONE thing I don't like about it is the display. I have a viking microwave above it which has a really nice blue display, the berts is a bright green which looks kind of like a 90's VCR. But hey I saved about 2500 by not buying the viking so I can live with it. I kind of went out on a whim by purchasing it. I had never seen one in person or even found any reviews online which is too bad. But I guess I'm the first one to really do a review! It was kind of strange how I ended up with it, my local dealer who I bought everything else from said they wouldn't be making it until next spring. I found it online and ordered it, showed up 4 days later. So I don't know what my local bert dealer was talking about. But I couldn't be happier that I purchased it. For the price there isn't anything close in style and in features. It looks beautiful in my kitchen.

Thanks, everyone. You all have given me some good things to think about. The kitchen won't be that big, basically an L shape with a large island and it will be open to the rest of the living/dining area. Simplicity and low maintenance are what I'm trying to make my mantra during this whole process since it's a beach house and I don't imagine doing too much cooking in the oven(except for chocolate chip cookies which are a must no matter what). I guess we could conceivably spend a Thanksgiving there, but even then I'd probably cater the turkey and make the sides myself so one oven should be ok. Akchicago-I hadn't thought about things that way, that's really helpful. I would love to get away with something 30" since it will give us more counterspace but if it's a cooktop that would be a problem as you said. So, if we go with 30", then the range seems to make the most sense. And, you're right-a 36" unit takes so much longer to preheat(our 36" Wolf takes almost 20 mins. to preheat and that's not ideal in a summer place). Fortunately, no back issues(yet) so I'm not too worried about that as much. But if it ends up that we want 36", I think we would go with the wall oven and the rangetop, a bit regretfully since I have this little dream of a cobalt blue range...... Thanks again everyone for helping me sort this out. I'm still a while away, but it's a relief to feel more confident about some of the choices that face me.

I can answer the BS oven door question. My 36" BS RCS was installed two days ago (haven't used it yet, hopefully this weekend). During the burn off of the oven (high temp is 450 F for an hour) I checked how hot the oven door got, as that has been a big issue noted on these boards. On my range, the SS part of the oven door did not get hot, just a bit warm. The glass on the oven door got hotter but not that hot. What did get quite hot were the sides/edges of the oven door. I could touch the side but not for long. Definitely quite hot. Not instant burn/scald though. There are vents (or look like vents) right there so it makes sense that those areas heat up a lot. Your kids would have to press their hands up against the 2" side of the door for several seconds for it to affect them negatively. More likely a kid running around will touch the front of the door and that is not a problem, on my range at least.