Question
I have never placed a wall oven in a base cabinet, but I have a client who wants to place a 30" wall oven below a 36" gas cooktop. I just looked up the specs on the cooktop and it is calling for 8" depth, which sounded like quite a bit to me. The wall oven specs call for 27 1/4' cutout for height so with a 34 1/2" base cabinet it's not possible. The salesman told my client it's done all the time, but I've never seen it done and am wondering if anybody else has done it and if so how did you do it? I'm sure there are more compact single ovens that could work, so any recommendations will be appreciated.
Forum Responses
(Cabinetmaking Forum)
From contributor T:
Be careful with this configuration. Not all oven cooktop combinations work. The manufactures have specs for which cooktops will fit over which oven. Check the web sites and/or have the "Salesman" get you a copy of the specs. We do several of these a year. Every instance is different and you have to be on your A game. We have usually had to lower the deck and reduce the bottom rail for this to work. Clearances are always close. Be sure you allow for countertop thickness (Stone vs. laminate/solidsurface). This bit us in the butt before. Here in the DC area you get to see it all because nobody wants what the guy next door has.
Second, it sounds to me like the appliances are mismatched. Why would anyone use a 30" oven under a 36" cook top? You're already going to have 36" of cabinet for the cooktop, why not fill the lower in with 36" of oven? Sure, you can do it, but why would you mix-and-match like that? Cook tops and ovens are both commonly available from dozens of manufacturers in either 30" or 36", there's no reason to have them different widths.
Third, you mentioned "gas" cooktop - whatever you do, make sure you allow room for all the gas line connections. It's not enough to engineer the opening alone, you have to allow for all the plumbing and electrical too.
Fourth, many times we have run into this same problem one-over-the-other problem. The appliances say you can put one over the other but the limitations of the cabinet dimensions don't allow it. What we've done in the past is build the oven cabinet without a bottom, just a stand-alone box support for the oven to sit on, like a mini toe kick. But this is for our face framed cabinets and you don't mention if that's what you're building. We've never had the problem come up in our euro lines so I'm not sure if the perfect solution exists.
