apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

you just changed my life! as well as added to my list of things to do during my cure.

And 2 ovens?!

And what's that cool thing on the counter to the left? or is it the countertop?

I have the same model here in Paris, where they are common -- and make a big difference in a small kitchen.

Does anyone know anywhere in the US or online to get something like this?

thats-alotta-dials! i think this is awesome.

i definitely need that. where can i get it in the US?

I grew up with this kind of range/stove. The truth is that this lid is sometimes a disaster waiting to happen. Once it was lowered when the top was still hot and that shattered the glass. Another model we had was just entirely metal with enamel finish, but we never seemed to use it very often. If you cook a lot, there is not much time to use it lowered. But if your kitchen is there for cosmetics, then it comes in handy to hide the top.

We have that oven. My mother has forbidden the glass to be lowered except when it's being cleaned. I think she is concerned it will be shattered - either by lowering it while the stove is radiating heat (our stove leaks heat like a sieve) or the hob is too hot, or by something too heavy being placed on it carelessly when it is down. So as we have no other storage for our pans they live on the hob and the glass remains up.

In my small apartment days, I kept an oversized cutting board on top of the stove as an extra prep surface. Obviously I moved it if I was using the stove (!), but it came in very handy the rest of the time.

Lids like this are also common in the places I have lived in Africa.

Lids like this are very common abroad (and used to be in the US, in stoves manufacturered by companies like Chambers in the 1930s and 1940s). I had the same kind of stove in Morocco. And, yes, you are not supposed to lower the lid on onto a still-hot stove surface -- it will crack, break, shatter, be destroyed. The lid is intended to keep out dust and dirt when the stove is not being used.

I am sure such things can be found here. I have a burner cover for four of the six burners on my Jennair cooktop that creates additional counterspace (it was actually meant to cover a grill, but I found the grill useless and replaced with additional burners -- cover still fits).

I've been looking at a lot of vintage stoves, and many of them have a similar top--made out of metal with enamel and often hinged (so you don't have that huge plate about to fall on you when you're cooking). I've never understood why appliance companies dropped the feature.

Amazingly all brazilian's stove are like this (~99%).

We have had several stoves like this - and I have never found the top to be useful at all - the stuff I'm chopping is invariably intended for a saucepan so the lid will be up anyway - if they are not fitted just right against the wall the damn things don't stay up when you're cooking and are always in danger of falling down - and they are invariably so fragile that you're worried about doing stuff on top- of them when they're closed anyway - I've always ended up taking them off totally - I would recommend a chopping board you could use on your stove in place of this

I have a rental apartment, so I did a DIY version: I had a butcher-block cutting board cut to fit precisely the top of my small stove. The stove (like most small ones I've seen) has sides that are a little raised, so the board fits snugly and never moves around.

I have to say, it's one of the smartest things I ever did. The only (mild) complication is that there are two stages to making dinner: The prep stage (with the block on) and the cooking stage (with the block put away on top of the refrigerator). But that's a lot better than having nowhere to prep at all!

I found the custom cutting-board maker online, and I was very happy with them. They're called Acorn Wood Products (just Google the name).

how do you get the food you just cut up into the pot on the burner?

This still doesn't work.