Heavy Metal

Woo-hoo! The stove and refrigerator got delivered on November 14!

Once we got the new kitchen floor down, it was time to start stacking things on top of it, starting with the major appliances. First up: the heavy metal.

We shopped around quite a bit for the range and the refrigerator before settling on a semi-local source in San Francisco. Turns out, commercial ranges are custom built. You order the size and features that you want, and they make it at the factory somewhere in the Midwest. The whole process takes maybe four weeks, depending on the options you order.

For the range, we got a 60" Wolf Challenger XL with six burners, a 24-inch griddle, and two gas ovens. The 60" dimension means it's 5 feet wide from side to side. It's freakin' huge. It's all stainless steel, MIG welded, and weighs 890 lbs.

Each of the six burners is as big as a dinner plate, and puts out 30,000 BTUs. Just lighting the pilots makes the room noticeably warmer. We could have fit up to 10 burners across the top, but that seemed kind of pointless, so we got six burners and a 24-inch griddle. The griddle plate is a solid block of metal and is so heavy it took two guys to lift it. It's not even fastened down; it's just held in place by gravity. Lots of gravity.

Having two ovens allows us to bake different things at once, and both are "bakers depth," meaning they accept a full-size 26" sheet pan (as opposed to the half sheet pans I'm used to). They're also gas-fired, with their own pilot lights.

With everything running, the range can put out over 250,000 BTUs, or about enough to launch a Saturn V. It sucks down gas faster than a Hummer. I love it.