Quick comment on the concept of white risers - wouldn’t they be getting kicked a lot and therefore dirty? OTOH, having the stairs being the only carpeted surface in the house might be a bit odd. I see no issues with the two stories having different flooring, but I would like the stairs to go with one of them.
If you redo your kitchen, would you want to have a separate cooktop and oven? If so, take the money.
That same unit is available with a stainless steel finish for around the same price, if you’d rather have that see if the warranty company will do it.
The kitchen is too small for a separate cooktop so we would stick with a single unit. Stainless would look out of place if we didn’t replace the other appliances. The current kitchen is outdated (which in itself doesn’t really bother me) with wood cabinets and subway tile counters and a porcelain sink. OK, the tile counters do bother me!
cb, I understand your rationale for the flooring choices. One good option for the stairway carpet would be a carpet that looks like sisal (but isn’t). That caramel color looks good with oak as well as darker woods and would give a natural fiber look to the stairs.
I like the idea of sisal-look carpet for the stairs. It would look nice and also provide some comfort and quiet the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Different flooring choices on different floors is pretty common where we’ve lived, and I think most buyers would be fine with your selections.
We have oak on the main level, laminate on the basement level, and carpet on the stairs in-between. It looks fine. I like the sisal-look idea.
I’d be very worried about slipping if we had laminate or hardwood stairs. I’ve slipped on the carpeted stairs before and that is bad enough.
@Marilyn, the question to me is whether you want only a 30" range/cooktop, and whether you want white appliances going forward.
I don’t think that carpeted stairs would be bad, with the right carpet, but it would be nice to have the wood flooring on both floors.On the other hand, I think that most people who have a finished walkout lower level use a different flooring there. Slate, for example.
In California, we don’t typically have basements, so concepts like “finished walk-outs” aren’t really meaningful here. Lower levels of hillside homes on the downslope side of the street are just considered part of the regular living space. If anything, they are considered “upside down” houses since you enter on the second floor of a two-story building.
The lower floor does not have the appearance of a basement because it is above grade down there with two separate doors going out. I’ll bring some carpet and laminate samples and see what looks good with the flooring on the top floor.
We passed our first Building Inspection today with flying colors. We actually tied some of the rebar a different way than the plan diagram - because we didn’t understand the diagram - but he allowed it because it still did the trick. He was very nice and did not say anything about the retaining wall - and he did look at it because he was looking at the slope of the lot and commenting on the lovely views
We are now focused on finishing oak flooring install upstairs and doing the detailed plumbing for sewage sump pump for the downstairs bathroom. Dug the pit for the pump today.
Marilyn,
I would ask myself these questions about the stove decision:
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Is the current stove working? Can you light a couple of burners with matches and does the oven cook at the correct temperature? Knowing that the holidays are coming
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Are you sure you are going to renovate the kitchen? I know that your refrigerator is on it’s last leg, so a renovation is probably in your future
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Have you been looking at pictures of kitchens? Are there certain kitchen styles that you are drawn to? If yes, what appliance coloring is in those kitchen pictures that you are drawn to?
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I am going to guess that white appliances are not in your dream kitchen (I could be wrong). If you have any doubts whatsoever, do not get a brand new white stove at this point. Either ask for the stainless one or take the money. Don’t worry about the stove not matching for awhile. Heck… $1,330 will buy a gorgeous stainless range at the Sears Outlet !
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I am assuming that your new dream stove would be convection oven… the replacement being offered is probably not a convection oven.
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A slide in stove is the next best thing to a cooktop. For looks it has a really nice line in a new kitchen. So, that is probably the best choice for the size of kitchen that you have
Sorry, just looked at the stove specifications. It is a good convection oven and I like the 5 burner configuration on top. I’m not sure I understand how that stove could have such a high retail price?? Probably because it is ‘Kenmore Elite’
Thanks all and cb especially. The current stove works; it’s just that when we turn on one burner, other burners have a tendency to also spark for a while. IIRC, the home inspection report did have some issues with oven temperature but we seldom bake so haven’t had any issues. We’re satisfied with a 30" stove; it’s what’s there now and is fine for our needs, and we managed very well in the old house with the same size stove.
I haven’t really thought about a dream kitchen if we did renovate, but I don’t think DH is buying into that idea so upgrading might be piecemeal anyway. Also I have no idea why the stove is so expensive except I browsed through the instruction manual online and it is WAY complex! Example - it has a Sabbath mode - not that we would ever plan to use it, but that such a feature even exists was news to me. And the warming drawer has three settings. And the burners have what sounds like a huge range of flexibility, which is very nice for the kind of cooking we do.
Probably the warranty company is offering this stove because they can’t find any other white 30" gas convection slide in ovens with their contracted partner companies. I don’t mind white per se; all of our old appliances were white. If it looks like a good oven and there’s no potential downside other than color, we’ll probably go for it.
"The current stove works; it’s just that when we turn on one burner, other burners have a tendency to also spark for a while. "
To me, this sounds like something Mr. B would easily take care of with the right part. It could be a faulty igniter controller something like that. This is how a gas stove igniter operates:
http://homeguides.sfgate.com/causes-electric-igniter-stove-spark-89082.html
“Example - it has a Sabbath mode - not that we would ever plan to use it, but that such a feature even exists was news to me.”
Our Miele ovens all have that feature, too. Not that I would ever use it either! Oh the things that get programmed into those appliances! 
A lot of ovens nowadays have a Sabbath mode.
My GE cooktop has been ‘broken’ for years. If we plug it in, the dang sparker igniter thing just starts randomly clicking through the night. So, same issue. The clickers go haywire. We gave up on keeping it plugged in and we keep a butane lighter next to stove and just light the thing by hand now. Have gotten used to it.
Do not be swayed by the ‘delivery, installation, takeaway’. Most places that you buy a new stove will haul away the old one and install your new one. Installation is simply plugging in the outlet and attaching the flexible gas hose to the existing valve coming out of the wall. You might have to buy a new flexible gas hose with a new one.
If you do decide to get a new one now, make sure that you force the guys to slow down a bit when they pull out the old one. It is going to be beyond gross behind that stove and you want a chance to scrub really good in the empty space before they install the new one. For a slide in… the edges where the lip was over the countertop are really going to be gross also. Be prepared with your cleaning supplies!
My personal vote is to get a stainless one because I know you will need a new refrigerator soon and you can get a stainless refrigerator to match the stove. Slowly work your way up to the appliances that you really want.
Stoves require anti-tip brackets or an anti-tip kit to be installed. They are all so light now that sliding out something heavy (think turkey) on an oven shelf can cause the stove to tip over.
If the stove is really old it may not have an anti-tip device installed, and if it does have one chances are it won’t be compatible with the new stove. So installation can be a little trickier than you might think.
I have spent the last two days pouring over the detailed plans and making a very long list of every part and piece needed to finish the job. Of course, there will be dozens more runs to Home Depot but I wanted the large bulky items to be delivered to the job.
Today is our big delivery of $3,500 worth of lumber, drywall, drywall mud, nails, plywood for shear walls, bathtub, toilets, etc. They will drop it off on the street and I am paying two guys just to carry it all down and stage it in the garage carefully.
There is an interesting fallacy about ‘pro status’ at Home Depot. Every time I go into Home Depot, the Pro Desk guys keep telling me I should make a long list and run it through their ‘bid room’ because I could save hundreds of dollars. This has never been successful before so I do not waste my time. Once again I fell for that… spent a very late night making a long detailed list with their Store SKU numbers and everything. You have to take this list into the store and stand in line waiting for a Pro Desk clerk. Luckily they know me, but I try to avoid Pro Desk like the plague because there is always a long line and it takes forever. Plus, I have discovered that if I buy stuff through the Pro Desk you don’t get a regular type receipt, you get a bunch of print outs. This makes it very difficult to try to return things because they want you to return the ‘special order’ to the Pro Desk. No thanks
Also, if you are very meticulous and remember to plug in your Pro Number every time you buy something you accumulate ‘dollars’ for the year. That accumulation seems to get you nothing. I keep asking what prize I’m going to get, what discount am I going to get? You probably have to spend at least $100,000 or something a year to get any type of discount.
So, I stand in line. I wait at least 30 minutes while the guy types in my whole order. He is ecstatic because I actually brought SKUs on my list to make it easy for him. Then the order comes out to about $2,300 and he tells me I have to be at $2,500 to go into ‘bid room’. I waste my time running around adding all the insulation to the order. We are at $2,502 and he submits to ‘bid room’. It comes back about 8 minutes later with a whopping $79 discount against all the stuff. I look at the guy and tell him that I’ve got my 10% off coupon… no thanks. I take the large order to regular check out and the computer system just falls apart because it can only generate a $50 max credit for a competitor coupon. I have to take the order back to Pro Desk (luckily it is at nighttime now so there is not a long line of ‘pros’) and he has to apply a 10% to each item on the order. Two hours later, the order is finally done and in the system.
I go back the next day to pick out a bathtub and some other heavy stuff to add to the delivery and the whole order blows up again when they try to add my 10% discount to the additional items on the delivery. I just gave up and bought them separately and then added them to the delivery.
Yes, I forgot about the Anti Tip device. Sometimes it is a pain in the butt to install because it’s hard to line it up correctly when you push the stove in
It’s crazy that Home Depot doesn’t have a better system. What a pain!
I totally understand the HD’s pro system. The last time I bought over $2500 of material I did NOT get ANY pro desk discounts. Why? Because I bought stuff on sale or those Nails and “Hard Goods” that are not dis-countable. For example, the 25c / sf laminated floor padding will not get any discounts, however, the 85c/sf water proof padding will. Nails, screws and bolts won’t, but Skil tools costing 100’s will.
Also, you really have to compare prices on some thing that is not “run of the mill” items, HD will clobber you on prices. Brass nipples for my water main is $7 each in HD, but the plumbing house half mile away charges $2. For the whole water main replacement parts, the HD charges $700, whereas the plumbing house charges $300. If you do not compare, you don’t know how HD screw you.