It's a new house! : Appliances

It's the first time I've entered into the world of appliances. Whenever we have moved houses we have just used what came with the house. I haven't ever had to buy a new oven, cooktop or rangehood. So out foray into this world has been fun but confusing - there is too much choice!

We started by visiting appliance shops, including Harvey Norman, The Good Guys and our local retravision to see what was out there. I was really shocked at how much everything costs! (it was obvious that I hadn't been appliance shopping before!). I didn't even know there were pyrolytic ovens!

I then hopped online to research brands / functions / reviews. This led me onto the building forums and advice from others building and renovating. Here I picked up the idea of importing our appliances from the UK. From all of my research, I really like the AEG and Neff ovens, however like Miele, the price in Australia is fixed across the board, and the price discrepancy between these brands and the mid range appliances (like Fisher &Paykel, Westinghouse, Bosch etc) is massive.

I found a couple of suppliers in the UK that other had used and I contacted them via email to enquire about the ovens I liked. One of the suppliers offered to call me from the UK - he was great and talked me through all of the appliances and what they recommended etc. When I had decided on the specific models, he sent me the quotes and I was blown away. We pay so much more here!

I am trying to achieve a Hamptons look in our kitchen, and to fit the theme we did seriously consider the traditional cookers. I loved the black and cream Rangemasters and similar, however again they were so expensive in Australia. Ultimately functionality won out, and we decided to go with slimline wall ovens. We are going to have them stacked in a wall unit - no bending over to access the oven anymore!!

We had decided to buy 2 ovens instead of one large one. From our research 2 ovens would be more economical (doesn't take as much power or time to heat or maintain heat) and wouldn't cross contaminate flavours. When it came to the cooktop, we had been going with gas due to cost, however the UK price of an induction cooktop was so good and induction is SO much easier to clean. So induction it is!

So I decided on the following appliances:

Neff B46C74N3GB Single Oven - Stainless Steel - Slide Away Door
http://www.neff.co.uk/showroom//ovens/single-ovens/B46C74N3GB.html?source=search