To spend £2000+ on an oven?

[AllTheFloralCurtains]

DP seems to think that a good oven costs £400 or less. Last year he bought a £200 single oven off Amazon for our teeny kitchen in our last house, knowing that we would be moving soon. (ie. Knew it was a cheap buy)

For background: We've just moved into a house (we bought it) with an oil fired aga and some crusty awful 70s oven thing.
Fantastically both have died in the first week meaning we have no heating and no oven.

A new boiler looks like £4500, so DP is feeling very sensitive to spending as we weren't anticipating having to immediately replace these things!

My Mum swears that the best thing to buy is a rangemaster. She recently bought a cheaper range oven and hates it. Rangemaster all the way apparently.

Looks like they range from £1500-£2500.

(we have no gas where we live, so it must be electric only.)

We can afford this, but I don't want to throw money away - what do people think is a reasonable price to pay for a double / range oven?

Induction jobs are pretty flaky, ime. We got through 3 of them in 14 years - one shorted out and another cracked. I'd never get one built into a cooker/range because of this.

We have a rangemaster professional+ duel fuel and it was a bit over £2k, i love it, for me it’s worth it, when I think about cost per use I don’t feel so bad , that’s how I justify it!

Hate the Rangemaster we inherited when we moved last year. Very shortly being ripped out and replaced with ovens in the wall at eye height. I also like cooking - the Rangemaster makes everything harder and slower as well as the right hand side oven not fitting any of my trays in it!

Source the boiler yourself. Top of the range combi boiler cost us £1500 last year.

I would echo pp, Get another opinion the aga. Your old aga is valuable once reconditioned, but an oil fired aga might be a good option for you to keep if you have no mains gas. If filthy it can be cleaned (nitromors and spatula). They can be repainted, even a different colour. You can book on aga cookery courses (Mary Berry taught these for decades).
Did the aga also used to provide your hot water?

Not sure we can source the boiler ourselves. It must be an oil one (no gas on the island) and the £4.5k includes fitting - which also involves laying it outside and redoing the pipes, as currently they lead from the aga.

Just a quick note that anything we buy would have 20% knocked off as we don't pay VAT here. Shipping would cost about £70.

Can someone explain the appeal of a range oven?

I have never used one, but they look inconvenient, so I must be missing something.

From what I can see, they are at the wrong height and often look awkward to open and some seem to get hot on the outside.
Also don’t you get dirt falling down the sides as they are not seamlessly installed into your kitchen?
They also presumably don’t have things like steam functions and evenly distributed digitally controlled temperature?

I would totally spend that sort of money on ovens if I was in a home I planned to stay in for a long time. But it would be two high quality single electric multifunction ovens built in to tall kitchen unit, so that I could see whatever is baking easily.

Perhaps I've skewed opinion here but I'm using Aga a bit loosely - it's a Stanley. It's an oil fired twin series and I don't for the life of me understand the love because its shit. Even if it was working, it has two small hot plates and one small oven space, with no window. If you wanted to cook more than one thing at a time, it'd be useless.

We have been in quarantine for 2 weeks with no heating 😂 of course I've had a professional in.

He came back today for the fourth time in 9 days. He thinks there's a part that needs replacing, cost is £1000. That is the tip of the iceberg for bits that need fixing though. A full refurbishment is probably looking like £2-3k.
Plus its huge (despite teeny cooking space) and takes up a large chunk of the kitchen.

New boiler is £4.5k including installation - 8 year guarantee and will last much longer. Its an outdoor oil fired thing, freeing up huge amounts of space in the kitchen and will be infinitely more efficient than Aga (Stanley)

We can get gas bottles but they are ££££ here and it would mean more plumbing work.

In short - I'm pretty convinced the Aga has to go. I'm sorry for not referring to it as a "Stanley" if that makes any difference, I presume Agas are fancier??

A range cooker is an imitation of an actual range (an aga) for people that can’t afford the fuel for an aga at current fuel prices. The op’s house had an aga which they are replacing for £4500 (the hot water element) plus extra for the cooker/hob functions.
The range is better than the aga in hot weather, but I agree an eye line oven (or two, if this is a large kitchen) and a well located job have to be better still...

Sorry didn’t see your post, I’ve not cooked on the Stanley brand. My aga only had two hobs, hence the cooking lessons to get used to it..

This is the kitchen.
We will be doing a refurb... Eventually. The eye level oven suggestions are very very appealing, however I've no idea when we will do the kitchen considering we don't have any showers in the house, so bathroom refurb is the first priority. As is replacing a lot of doors which have warped because the previous owners left the house unheated for 18 months mutter mutter
We were not anticipating replacing the boiler so soon, so it's thrown plans a bit.

Any kitchen suggestions welcome. We were wondering if we could get away with just painting the cupboards etc

I love my Rangemaster Pro. It has huge capacity. I would never want two single ovens side by side. Not least because 99% of houses near me have that set up but also because every single or double electric oven I have had has been massively unreliable.

@AllTheFloralCurtains your kitchen is gorgeous. If you can’t get the existing range fixed, I would definitely get a new range. I cannot see the eye level side by side working in your space.

I would paint the cupboards personally.

More expensive again but have you looked at Everhots - electric and masses of oven space even in the smallest 60. Added advantage of always on, background heat, dries washing, herbs, wet dogs and humans....but you would also need a boiler

[quote PotTheBlackScrewBack]@AllTheFloralCurtains your kitchen is gorgeous. If you can’t get the existing range fixed, I would definitely get a new range. I cannot see the eye level side by side working in your space.[/quote]
Yes I can't quite picture eye level ovens unless we really did gut it and start again. Which I'm not too fussed about doing as I'm happy enough with the current layout, just needs a bit of modernising.
Don't get me wrong, I'd gut it and have a top of the range amazing kitchen if money were no object, but I'm generally more function over fashion

It’s not really two grand on an oven. It’s a range cooker. It’s two ovens and at least six burners depending on the model

We have the toledo xt and I have to say it is very good, ovens heat up quickly and the rings are very fast, good even heat.

@Bluntness100

It’s not really two grand on an oven. It’s a range cooker. It’s two ovens and at least six burners depending on the model

We have the toledo xt and I have to say it is very good, ovens heat up quickly and the rings are very fast, good even heat.

It's my first real kitchen experience (usually I've just got on with whatever was in the house I lived in) so I'll admit that "oven" to me meant stove + cooker. And I thought a range was just... Bigger

That’s not a bad kitchen. If you painted the cupboards and that orange beam, it would look loads better. It definitely needs a range, you’re absolutely right.

I've got a big range master which we paid over £2k for and it's great - having 2 full size ovens makes roast dinners and catering for parties really easy and I love the induction hob and griddle. I would buy mine again.

Do you have gas?

We have a big rangemaster, cost just a bit over 2K and we’ve had it about 6 years.
It’s absolutely brilliant with one exception - the grill is ridiculously shallow! If you try and grill anything on toast you risk your toppings getting swiped off as you slide it in
We’ve figured out how to get around it now but it was annoying.
Anyway, we get it cleaned professionally twice a year to keep it in good condition, it’s just a brilliant oven.
The really expensive thing though was the extractor fan and hood, I remember that being around £700 on top of the oven and being rather and last year it broke. Dh managed to fix whatever was wrong with it thank god, didn’t fancy spending that again but it’s essential!

Gas hob though and electric oven, hate everything about induction hobs although they are much easier to clean!

@Northumberlandlass

I have a rangemaster 110 dual fuel, with a grill pan on the side. We just LOVE it.... It was £2000, but for us it was worth every penny. We love cooking & enjoy it very much.

I have one of these that is still going strong after 20+ years. It's only ever needed 2 minor repairs. I love it too! I just had my whole kitchen remodelled around it.