Kitchen Applicances shopping - what do you have at home & do you like them?

Running all GE stuff here. Seems durable and no failures to date. Will likely go with a Bosch when our 13 yr old dishwasher fails.

Minor hijack here - Compactors came up in a discussion at work the other night. I've seen one house that had one, co-workers had never seen one , ever! I thought they were an appliance that had faded from use. How many out there use them?

We have a Maytag "over the oven" microwave and it's fine and all, but I ABSOLUTELY DETEST the repeated timer / it's finished cooking alarm.  It goes off REPEATEDLY and I mean REPEATEDLY until you stop the timer or open the mic. door, like you're some kind of idiot.  Seriously, there's no effing end.  

Beep  then 3 seconds later beep,  then 3 seconds later beep,  then 3 seconds later Beep,  then 3 seconds later beep,  then 3 seconds later beep  then 3 seconds later Beep,  then 3 seconds laterbeep, beep Beep,  then 3 seconds later beep,  then 3 seconds later beep  then 3 seconds later Beep,  then 3 seconds later beep,  then 3 seconds later beep  then 3 seconds later  you get the idea, till you want to throw a brick thru the thing.

Other than that it's a fine microwave :D

Maytag, French Door (counter-depth) refrigerator with freezer on the bottom.  We love it. 

Running a mix of Whirlpool/Kenmore appliances.   Wall oven has been a little flaky... will "reset" after cooking sometimes, but never in the middle of anything.  It is a wall oven with a microwave on the top.  This is a GREAT combo... frees up counter space and puts the microwave at a good working level.

Unless your kitchen has doors at each end, BUY A QUIET DISHWASHER.  You're going to spend at least $600 to get a really quiet one.  Remember that when they rate them in decibels.... 3dB of difference is *twice* the volume.   So, a 45dB dishwasher is twice as loud as a 42dB dishwasher. 

Our kitchen opens up to our great room so this was really important to me. At our old house, I had to turn the TV up if I was running the dishwasher.  I really *hate* loud environments so this was a big deal for me.

The nice part is that in general, the quiet/expensive dishwashers also come with the most modes, so you can do a "top rack only" or a "china/stemware" cycle.

We went with gloss black.  Didn't like the look or the fingerprints with stainless.  However, the plethora of refrigerator magnets in use at our house really jacked up the finish on the fridge.  It's possible that I turtle waxed our fridge.   It did make it look better, but now all the artwork slides to the bottom unless you use a *really* strong magnet.

Here's a pic of the wall oven and fridge: (sorry, I don't have a good one of the dishswasher.  It has top buttons, so it's very simple on the front.)

From New House

Not sure if you're doing new cabinets and counters too..... but if you are... consider raising your countertops to 39" instead of 36".   It makes working on your countertops SO MUCH more comfortable.   Our surrounding countertops are 39" and the island is 36"   It really works well.   My MIL is only 5'0" so she's not a huge fan.   Wife is 5'4" and loves it. I'm 5'10" and I can't wait to get out of our Beijing kitchen and back to my raised counters.

I teach the Maytag repair man's daughter (from the commericials)

We found a Fisher&Paykel double dishwasher at Lowe's for $325. Someone had bought it and returned it, still in the box. Thing normally retails for $1100. Was very easy to install, and you can run each the top and bottom compartments separately, so it's very economical and you can do a small load.

Last house we had a Sub-Zero fridge and a Thermador double wall oven and cook top. I think the Sub-Zero was not worth the money, but the oven was excellent.

I have got all Frigidaire Professional, and I love 'em.  

It's the nice kind of "stainless" that doesn't get easily smudged and is super easy to keep clean. The dishwasher is stupid quiet, the fridge just works and the range has a bunch of cool features.  Nice, large OTR microwave completes the set.

We have a Whirpool that does the same thing.  It drives me crazy!  That's a feature I'll definitely test before buying a new microwave.

All GE for us with no problems whatsoever so far.

Bosch looked really nice but is expensive comparatively. And we got a sweet deal on the whole set by buying from a kitchen remodel contractor. He had a booth he would set up at trade shows with a mini kitchen. He changed appliances in his booth every year so we got the whole thing really cheap, fridge, washer, convection oven. Worked out great and no problems so far.

Well, I can tell ya what NOT to buy.  We remodeled our kitchen back in 2003 and installed professional grade GE Monogram appliances, and we've spent over $4K in extended warranties since then and have gotten every penny's worth of value out of the warranties.  Every single appliance has had at least two service calls, some as many as five.  The range hood, dishwasher, range, and wine refrigerator all had some kind of failure that rendered the product useless and in need of major repairs like a new circuit board, new pump, etc.

I've heard great things about GE Profile stuff and we have some of that now at our new house.  Like 1/3 the cost and works 10x better.

We have a three year old Samsung stainless Fridge, Stove and Microwave they are great.  We also have a three year old stainless Maytag dishwasher - Sucks.