new kitchen -fitted or freestanding oven?
new kitchen -fitted or freestanding oven?
Finally getting round to fitting the kitchen in our newly renovated holiday house. I have seen previously that people have suggested free standing appliances due to the fact that they can easily be replaced if needed...does the same apply to ovens? A built under oven with a hob would look better I think, but a freestanding oven may be more practical...any thoughts please? many thanks
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From the point of view of cooker, definitely a separate hob and oven. If hob breaks it is only hob to replace. With a cooker, you'd have to replace the whole thing, even if the oven still worked. All my appliances are built in though. It looks so much better in a small kitchen like mine, but can see the advantages of freestanding.
Have the oven built in, with a separate hob.
I’m against most built in/fully integrated appliances in a holiday let as they are a pig when they go wrong; they are often not stock items that you can rush out and pick up (although they are far more readily available online than they used to be with fast delivery), and swapping the integrated doors or fascia panels can be a long job. Being able to swap an appliance in a changeover is a real bonus.
An oven is the exception. Apart from the fact that freestanding cookers now look like something from a 1960s soap opera, a built in oven doesn’t have integrated doors and is remarkably simple to swap out - plus the fact that they have very little to fail compared with say a dishwasher (did I just hear the Appliance Breakdown Demon knocking......? )
As Hells Bells says, a hob fault doesn’t then require a whole new cooker.
I’m against most built in/fully integrated appliances in a holiday let as they are a pig when they go wrong; they are often not stock items that you can rush out and pick up (although they are far more readily available online than they used to be with fast delivery), and swapping the integrated doors or fascia panels can be a long job. Being able to swap an appliance in a changeover is a real bonus.
An oven is the exception. Apart from the fact that freestanding cookers now look like something from a 1960s soap opera, a built in oven doesn’t have integrated doors and is remarkably simple to swap out - plus the fact that they have very little to fail compared with say a dishwasher (did I just hear the Appliance Breakdown Demon knocking......? )
As Hells Bells says, a hob fault doesn’t then require a whole new cooker.
We have freestanding which we inherited from the previous owner. It does make it easy to replace, which we will probably do to a better model soon. However if I was starting from scratch I would probably go for built in as it looks nicer. I wouldn't have thought it would be that much trouble to replace either a built in oven or hob although might be a bit more expensive.
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- Posts: 13173
- Joined: Sat Apr 30, 2005 8:42 am
- Location: French Alps
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