This Kitchen Appliance Hack Can Save You Thousands

If you’ve ever had your eye on a super fancy 60″ stove from companies like Viking or Wolf, you know just how expensive they are. These kitchen ranges are fantastic features for serious cooks, but an extra large one can cost beaucoup de bucks — we are talking over $10,000 for that single appliance alone. So when I saw this genius workaround, which gives you most (if not all) of the features, without the higher price tag, I really wanted to share.

Studio McGee designed this beautiful kitchen that’s modern with just a touch of rustic mountain style (you can, and should, check out the whole home here). The white glazed subway tiles make the black cabinets and gold hardware really stand out. And the 60″ Wolf stove topped by a custom riveted hood is an avid cook’s dream.

Unfortunately, a similar range — depending on if it’s gas or dual fuel — can run between $13,500 and $17,195. Of course, with this model you also get fun stuff like infrared griddles and charbroilers.

Now, if you’re already spending thousands on your stove, you might not care about this hack, because this isn’t the cheap IKEA type of hack. But, when they designed their new kitchen a couple of years back, Chris Loves Julia wanted all the burners and oven space as one of these 60″ versions, but they didn’t want to spend that amount of money.

Their solution? Two identical, standard size freestanding stoves installed side by side. (During installation, they ran a single gas line, then split it for the two ranges.) Together, they look a lot like a 60″ stove and have all the capacity of one. (I take that back. I don’t think these have an infrared griddle. My bad.)

They spent $5,398 ($2,699 each) on two 30″ gas Frigidaire Professional ranges, which was still a chunk of their $28,000 renovation budget, but a whole lot less than it could have been. A quick search shows this model is also available from Lowes for even a little bit less.

Chris and Julia revisited their kitchen a year later, and have no regrets about their choice. Although they say they don’t use the double ovens every day, all the burners are full at least once a week.

What do you guys think? Is this the best thing ever? If you were serious about your kitchen, would you go this route? There’s one drawback that I can think of: if one of the stoves has an issue, and you wind up having to replace it, you’d have to replace both at the same time, or lose the 60″ look. Can you think of any other pitfalls of this approach?