90cm wide cooker problem - advice/solutions?

[stevehayter]

Hi there,

We had a new kitchen installed when we moved in, and we (regretfully now) decided to keep the existing cooker (ie: oven and hob). It was fairly old, but due to budget constraints at the time, we kept it, and I (naively) assumed it would be easy to replace at a later date.

A photo of it is attached to this post.

Fast forward 2 years, and it's now developed not one - but two faults. Whilst we could pay to get it repaired, it would probably be more economical long term to replace it. At least that's what I thought. Having checked sites like ao.com and Currys, standard cookers are about £300-400, which is fine. However, on closer inspection, they are all widths of around 60-70cm. Yet ours is 90cm.

Having researched some more, this appears to be the width of what are advertised as 'range cookers', and they cost at least twice as much. The irritating thing is that although our cooker is the *width* of a range cooker, it has none of the features of it. It has a standard 4 ring ceramic hob, and a fairly bog standard oven. It just happens to have 2 storage drawers either side which take up the additional 30cm width. And we have no need for a full range cooker (and also can't afford the extra - at least not easily).

So my question is, is it possible to buy 'bog standard' 90cm width cookers? I have looked around but not found any. Clearly this was purchased at some point, but is it a one off?

Or does anyone have any ideas on cost effective options on what to do? We've considered the following:

- Extending the worktop and adding additional cupboard/drawers in the additional space. Would look good, but would be £££.
- Constructing some sort of home made shelving (but this would look pretty poor as it wouldn't match).

However, adding labour and materials in, you're not going to be far off the amount you'd pay extra for a range cooker anyway with these options.

Any help would be appreciated

Steve

 

[jj4091]

You have a really nice kitchen there & it would be a shame to spoil it by codging something up yourself. If that is all you can afford to do then I would look at the possibility of utilising the existing carcass & fitting a conventional cooker/oven & hob into it. The pictures give the impression that it is a stainless steel unit with a hob & oven built into it, but you won't be able to tell without stripping it down. Are the problems that you mention unrepairable? I would have thought it was at least worth getting an estimate to repair it.

 

[stevehayter]

Thanks for your response, jj4091 .

It's not a carcass per se - the oven is actually part of the unit and can't be removed. At least it looks like it is - you've made me want to check now .

The problem is repairable (there are in fact 2 issues), but we've been quoted between £160-£200 to fix both by a couple of repair people, one of which we use all the time. It seems a pretty old cooker, so I don't think it's straightforward to fix.

 

[jj4091]

Which manufacturer is it? It could be they have built it around separate existing appliances. £200 is a lot less than the price of a range cooker, personally I think it would be a waste not to have it repaired.

 

[stevehayter]

Your comment about it being a stainless steel unit with the hob and oven built into it made me go check some more, and you're right - thank you so much. The oven and hob are by separate manufacturers, and if you check carefully, the oven is a separate unit. Obviously going to check, but it seems like the oven can just be swapped out with a standard built under oven.

Thank you so much - wouldn't have checked without you

Cheers

Steve