How to Bargin Yourself Into an Amazing Stove

This is the story of how we got a $3,000 oven for $1,800.  It all started when our refrigerator has been making this noise.  Not a pleasant noise, sort of a "THUMP..shutter..shutter".  That can't be good can it?  So, the hubby and I are probably looking at getting a new refrigerator in the near future.  We are crossing our fingers and holding our breath that this one lasts us a long time, but the longer the noises go on, the more anxious we get.  We know we could have a repair man come out to fix it, but after the water softener guy stopped by recently and stuck us with a $300 bill we wondered just how much we wanted to sink into our old refrigerator.  Especially since we dream of stainless! 

But this post is about a new stove....quite a jump from a refrigerator.  Let me explain.  We need a very special kind of stove.  It's called a slide in range, which has controls on the front of the stove.  Typical slide in ranges, well....slide in between two cabinet units and are meant to sit up on the counter top.  For this reason the sides of these stoves are usually exposed, because nobody is really ever going to see them.  Since one side of our stove is bare, we need a slide in range that has both sides finished like a normal stove.  So here comes the question: but why do you need a slide in range with dials on the front?  Well because our bar counter top reaches my nose, and it does that because it covers the back of the stove.  Do you see that? 



In our dream kitchen, we want to lower the bar height so normal people and short people alike can enjoy sitting at the bar and conversing with those in the kitchen.  Plus it will open the kitchen up big time.  Since this stove is so hard to find (like our white whale) the hubby and I discussed that we would need to buy the stove before we buy a refrigerator so the finishes on both will match.  Are you with me so far? Wheewww....

Last weekend we went out to Home Depot, Lowes, and Warner Stellan "just to look".  After some sticker shock at $3,000 - $6,000 for the stove we needed, and only finding 4 stoves that fit our criteria we kind of panicked.  In a last ditch effort we tried Sears.  They have good commercials  so we decided why not?  We found the PERFECT stove, GE Cafe line....with a double oven....boo ya!  Isn't it pretty?


AND it was on sale!  Originally $3,000 marked down to $2,200.  When we said "yes please, we'll take it" we got a worried look from our sales guy who told us he couldn't order any more because they were upgrading the model.  He offered to sell us the floor model at a discounted rate.  After everything was said and done (we talked them down a little more from their original offer because we would deliver and install ourselves) we walked away with the $3,000 gas slide in stove with double oven for $1,800.  And that's how it's done.