i'm completely renovating, so anything goes. but i'm leaning toward opening up the kitchen to the living room, which means i'd like everything in the kitchen to look nicer, which gets me to the new, confusing, and expensive world of built-ins.
i've never had any built-ins, so i'm still in sticker shock.
A. why are the refrigerators so expensive? i paid $3.5k for my counter-depth lg fridge, and i thought that was a lot. what more will a $10k built-in do for me? is this just about getting the clean cabinetry look? (i'm legit asking if i'm missing something, in case that reads as sarcastic.)
B. i've only ever had freestanding gas ranges. i mean, i'm fancy now with my dual-zoned convection oven, but it's still just a regular range. for whatever reason, and it's not the price tags, i'm sure that i'm going to upgrade here. however, i'm really confused about the ovens.
(1) on the cooktops, i've seen a style that i like, which is more expensive than my current range, but let's not dwell on that right now. most brands have a version of it:
https://www.ajmadison.com/cgi-bin/ajmadison/PCG305W.html -- i assume "professional" has no real meaning. really, i just like that the knobs are in front, not on the side, because i guarantee that i would drop a 10-pound creuset pot or lid on those side knobs the first week i had it. and that would be right after i spilled soup on them. just no knobs on the counter where i can ruin them. definitely no electronics.
(2) on the wall ovens:
(a) why are most wall ovens electric? at aj's, just as an example, there are 491 electric wall ovens but only 13 gas wall ovens, 2 of which are more than $10k. wtf?
(b) i've only ever had gas ovens. has anyone else made that change? is broiling with an electric oven the same as broiling with gas? how about preheating? i've always thought of gas as better for cooking than electric. what is wrong with gas wall ovens?
(c) speed ovens? again, wtf? is it a $2k microwave? a $2k air fryer? a spare convection oven? bosch's description is that it "delivers oven-like results." does anyone have one? "oven-like results" doesn't sound appetizing.
(d) steam ovens? i just learned today, in a thread here, that those existed. there's a reservoir system? if you steam seafood, the steam from the seafood must get back to the reservoir, so how do you clean that? i'm an en papillote person, so a steam oven sounds truly interesting. but maybe i need to stick to my paper.
(e) warming drawers? do people use them or are those there just to balance the size of the microwave with the size of the oven?
(f) any other cooking appliances that i should consider spending my pennies on?
any advice will be appreciated.