Chloe45, my installer unzipped my wall and found worst case scenerio, water pipes and gas lines exactly where I was hoping to recess. So in my situation 18" will be the greatest depth. If the wall cabinet is bumped out further, the counter below will then be too shallow. It seems to me that some GWebbers have posted drilling air holes in the floor of the wall cabinet to recess the mw further back than the specs dictate. I would think that would shorten the life of the mw but would be an interesting question to post. I will probably go will the PEM31. In my post on the Kitchen forum, the lady who had one seemed happy with hers, including the with the turntable off for large casseroles. However, I wonder if it was an older model that had the higher cfm and better construction than current models. I saw a 2.2 cu ft. GE 2014 built-in model at Pacific in Best Buy on Friday. The air vents at the top, above the door, were discrete and the frame looked nice, although at $250 was outrageously priced. GE execs should be run off for taking advantage of this market who have depth restrictions and still want a nice look. Reducing the watts to 800 is unbelievable. GE has new Spacemaker models coming out right now. The company seems to cheapen further with each generation. As far as the interior paint peeling, I will resort to buying the mw interior paint. It seems to work according to some posters.

Olivertwist - I went to the GE website and looked up PT 7050. The Ten-Pass is the broil and bake elements that are coiled ten times or make ten turns from edge to edge of the oven. I.e. full coverage. By contrast, there have been complaints on this forum of other brands' ovens having the element covering mostly the center, so that things go uncooked if they are at the edges of the oven. E.g. a large baking pan filled with cookies where the cookies on the outside rows are not cooked at the same time as the cookies in the middle of the pan. GE is saying their Ten-pass elements prevent that. I think if your appliance guy had not found a replacement oven, you'd be here complaining how he left you with no oven. Much worse outcome than him finding you the newer model. Yet he just can't win. Also you are overthinking the matchy-ness of the OTR. If you are so concerned that the "eyelid shape" of the OTR doesn't match the non-eyelid shape of the new oven, get a different GE OTR. It doesn't have to be a GE Profile; I saw several OTRs on the GEappliances website that were not GE Profile, just plain "GE", that do not have the eyelid shape and would "match" your new oven. (and frankly I think the eyelid shape is kinda '90's.) Here is a link that might be useful: PT7050 on GE Appliances Website This post was edited by Mrs_Nyefnyef on Sun, Jul 21, 13 at 23:16

From my experience, GE has very good cooking products, OK refrigeration & laundry products, and not-so-good DWs. When we built back in 1995, the builder only provided GE products, but allowed us to upgrade - so we upgraded to all Profile appliances: Smoothtop Convection Range, DW, Refrigerator, and washer & dryer (OK, the last two were our purchases...). Or experiences: Range...Wonderful! It was still going strong and looked like new when we remodeled in 2008. We donated it to our church for a family who was in desperate need of a new range. We heard through the grapevine that they were overwhelmed and couldn't believe how it was in such perfect working condition & appearance. (Yes, we used it all the time for the 13 years or so that we had it.) It was so easy to keep clean (it had a speckled gray top that never looked dirty even when it was!) Refrigerator...For the most part, very good. It is a 36" x 36" top freezer...very large and spacious. It's still going strong in our basement (almost 17 years - of course, it's not energy star rated...) My only complaint is the ice maker & dispenser (one of the few top-freezer Refs that had one back then.) The dispenser kept freezing until we finally stopped using it. We had GE out several times over 2 or 3 years and they admitted they had had many problems with them...none that anyone could solve...other than to tell us to occasionally defrost it with hair dryer. They did replace the entire refrigerator once on the off chance that we had a lemon, but it had the same problems. After about 8 years, the water line to the ice maker sprang a leak and rather than get it fixed, we just disconnected it. The rest of the refrigerator has been very good. I love the fairly large meat compartment, the two crispers, the large tilt out compartment that I store cheese and similar items in, etc. GE customer service, in my experience, was very good to work with...at least back then. I have not had any dealings with them in the past 10 years or so. Dishwasher...This one was a disaster. We had to replace the motor twice in about 5 years. The third time we scrapped it and got a Maytag. Like the GE Profile range, the Maytag DW was wonderful! Everything came out clean no matter how much we crammed into it! :-) It was also going strong when we remodeled and it was also donated to our church for another needy family (never heard about their experiences though - I do not know who got either of our appliances). Clothes washer...OK, but not great. It did last 7 or 8 years, as I recall. But, we had to replace the bearings (??) once. (Not sure what it was!) We also had to replace the switch that allowed the spin to be on or off depending on if the lid was closed or open several times (we learned how to do it ourselves after the second replacement). The second time we started having major problems, we bought a Whirlpool Gold - it was fine. No problems for about 8 years or so. When it died we replaced it with a Kenmore Elite front loader. It's OK, but it leaks if even one hair is on the door...even other times as well. It didn't start happening until it was out of warranty, of course! Clothes dryer...Again, OK, but not great. The sensor dry died after about 3 years, but it worked fine on timed dry. We finally had to replace it after about 10 years. We gambled and got another GE b/c it was a great sale. Other than than the sensor not being the greatest at detecting when something is dry, it works fine. I find that if I put it on "extra dry" and then "extended tumble" everything is dry when it's done. I probably won't get another GE dryer, though. ... Fast forward to 2007 when we were ordering appliances for our remodel.... I started looking around at various manufacturers, primarily GE, Wolf, Viking, Dacor, and, once I discovered them, Miele. I did look at KA and Whirlpool, but dismissed them pretty quickly for cooking appliances based on reviews and what was available (functionally). Cooktop...We have a GE Profile cooktop that is OK. It works fine, it's just that with the all black surface, it's harder to keep looking clean than our range was. Ovens...Initially, I was just looking at double convection ovens. As I was researching, I discovered the GE Profile & GE Monogram Trivection ovens (GE's speed cook ovens). I watched Alton Brown's video about it and was hooked when he baked potatoes in 17 minutes - with crispy skins! I looked at other manufacturers, but based on cost and my great experience with my range, I ended up with the GE Profile Trivection double ovens. I also looked at Advantium, but preferred the Trivection ovens. At that time, both the GE Profile and GE Monogram lines carried the Trivection ovens (today, only Monogram has them). I researched both and other than looks and cost, could not find anything different. I even called both GE Profile and GE Monogram customer service to ask if there was any difference other than the external look. Both told me the internals were identical. The only differences were (1) Monogram came with a broiler pan, (2) different external look, and (3) price. I preferred the Profile look to the Monogram and I didn't need yet another broiler pan (nor was it worth the thousand-dollar or so difference in price). I will say the GE Monogram rep was a little offended when I told him I didn't think the look was worth the price difference. He seemed to think the "prestige" of the Monogram name was worth the extra money...NOT! I have been very happy with my ovens and would definitely buy them again! Refrigerator...We have a 36" french-door bottom drawer freezer, counter-depth, water-in-door refrigerator No complaints. Dishwasher...I was very adamant about no GE DW. I wanted a Miele, but I couldn't convince my DH that we should spend the extra money for one! So, we ended up with a KitchenAid....everyone was raving about KA here at that time. Since my DH does most of the dishes, I let him pick the DW (and cleanup sink). Our experience...not so good. It doesn't clean very well. We have to put it on "Heavy Duty" for every wash and be careful how we load the DW...and some silverware still comes out dirty most of the time as well as the occasional dish if we haven't rinsed them well enough. This may be more than you wanted to know, but I got on a roll! Sorry it's so long-winded!

Believe it or not, four years later the PEM31 is still the only microwave of this size around. Here is my situation, small'ish kitchen with no built in microwave currently. To maximize counter space I am considering taking down my old vent hood over my stove and mounting this microwave in it's place. I can't place a normal OTR microwave over my stove because the cabinet above the stove is too low and would place the bottom of the microwave too close to the cooktop. I really only have the 12 inch height to work with. Mounting this microwave under any other existing cabinets isn't really workable because my cabinets are mounted 16 inches above the counters, leaving only 4 inches from bottom of microwave to counter which is unusable. So, has anyone mounted this microwave above the stove or placed it on a shelf above the stove? If so, can you please post pictures.I am not that concerned about losing the vent hood as I rarely use it anyway. Thanks!