Saturday, April 12, 2008

meet bert

when we moved into our house we inherited a 24" Frigidaire electric range. i think this was only the second time i had ever lived in a place that had such a small stove. i started looking online at various manufacturers and thought long and hard about which one i was going to save my pennies for. i found a really cool looking thermador range that was 46" wide with 2 ovens but when we went to trail appliances one rainy afternoon and i got to see it in person, i didn't like it so much. not only did it look huge in the showroom- which means in our wee kitchen it would be massive, it had curves where it shouldn't and parts of it seemed not as high quality as you'd expect for ten thousand dollars.
so a good wander of the showroom was in order...
...and then i met bert.
the picture above is the 36" 5 burner free standing range by bertazzoni. from their home page: "bertazzoni cooking products originate in Emilia-Romagna, a region world-famous for its food. Precision-engineered to the highest specifications by the Bertazzoni family, who have been making high-quality ranges since the beginning of the last century, every appliance bearing the Bertazzoni name represents an unwavering commitment to quality. " you can read the history of bertazzoni here.
the simplicity of the design caught my eye immediately! and who can resist a winged burner for the logo!?! so, research was in order. the knobs are metal, not plastic, and have a child safe feature so if the kids decide to cook and pass over the igniting, the gas doesn't leak. so smart! derek found out that there are many lovers of bertazzoni and that almost no one had problems with it.
i phoned trail appliances and was laughed at when i asked if they price matched to the states. so, we took our business to mount vernon, washington.
last night we, meaning derek, dismantled the one cupboard that had housed our tupperware, and took off some of the blue paneling to see what we could be dealing with later, and to see if we can have the chimney as a backsplash for the stove. how cool would that have been? as it turned out the chimney isn't where we'd like it to be aesthetic wise, so we dropped that idea. what we did find out was that the wall if furred out about 2" infront of the plaster wall, which is crumbling apart. as if that didn't make the room smaller, there's the board and batton plywood on that, and then laminated plywood backspashes on that! we're probably going to gain 3" in the kitchen.
it took pretty much all day for derek and my dad to drive down and get the stove, hook up the gas, trips to the local hardware store, fix the leak... but wow, does it cook great! i made spinach and feta quiche, roasted potatoes- which fit side by side! and steamed veggies and garden salad. my recipe for quiche says to bake for 90 minutes and i put my oven thermometer in just to see how well it kept the temperature. lemme tell you, it didn't dip once. 350F on the dail was 350F in the oven. brilliant. absolutely brilliant!



someone pinch me

2 comments:

Jennifer said...

Drool! Beautiful stove.

Three inches is a LOT in a kitchen.. congrats on finding it!s

SmilingJudy said...

Awesome! Thanks for the review. I'm pretty set on getting a Fratelli Onofri for my kitchen remodel, but Bert is pretty high on the list of alternates.