Built In Cookers

Most people opt to have one of the many varieties of built in cookers these days. Two of the main advantages of built in cookers are that they are easier to co-ordinate into a kitchen colour scheme and dirt and dust cannot gather behind or beneath them, so less cleaning.

There are many kinds of built in cookers and many styles and colours. In fact, once you have decided on the fuel you want for your built in cooker, colour and style are the next most important choices to make.

Built In Cookers

These days most people prefer to have a built in cooker because of the reasons mentioned above: basically they are more attractive and make the kitchen easier to keep clean. However, not so long ago only gas and electric cookers could be built-in by average craftsmen and freestanding cookers like the Aga or Rayburn were left to stand on there own.

That has all changed, now you can have any cooker you like built-in and colour co-ordinated with the rest of your kitchen. The manufacturers and fitters of even solid fuel cookers and dual fuel range cookers can arrange to have the casing of their cookers enamelled to match any colour you like.

There are two ways of building a cooker in.

The first way is to buy the cooker in two parts: the hob and the oven. You can either buy them from the same manufacturer or from different ones - it makes not difference and you can have a gas hob and an electric cooker or whatever combination you like.

You can then either buy a base unit, usually a 600 millimetre base unit for the oven to slot into or you can have a carpenter box the oven in for you. Then when the work top or counter top goes on, the carpenter will cut a hole in it to take the hob, in the same way that he will for the sink.

The second way is to buy a free-standing cooker complete with hob and oven. This unit will usually be 600 mm or 1200 mm in width in order to be compatible with the rest of your kitchen cabinets (see the fourth photo above). The kitchen installer will then either box it in or leave it free to be rolled in and out, as you please.

One of the main the advantages of having a built-in cooker is not having to clean behind it, so most people choose to have the cooker completely built-in. After all, why would you ever want to pull it out except to clean behind it?

There are a lot of different styles of built in cookers and one of the most popular is having the oven at eye-level with storage space or even a second oven below it. The hob is then built into the work top.

Many manufacturers of built in cookers produce their cookers in various colours and some will even enamel your cooker in any colour you like for a price. Black, brown and white are the easiest colours to find in shops for gas and electric cookers, but in this respect it is the solid fuel cookers that show the most flexibility because you can have them enamelled any colour you like at the factory.