Buying a stove resolved

Update on the stove shopping fiasco and the high cost of repair parts.

Called up an appliance repair shop to inquire as to which brand was the least troublesome and which was the most reasonabe on parts, sadly they were of llittle help.
Next I found a website that sells repair parts for applianes.
One by one I typed in model numbers of stoves currentley available and checked the price for control boards.
Many of them were $250.00 -$400.00+ for control panels.
Frigidaire came out the winner with the average board priced around the $100.00 mark. That I can stomach.
Found a nice stainless gas range with all the bells and whistles online and before I knew it I had ordered the matching stainless dishwasher to go along side of it.
Will pick them up in town next week.
My dear wife will be happy and I will get to crawl around running more outlets and gas lines through the floor.

Well, that's one approach. However, just because the control boards are cheap doesn't mean your range won't have some part with a high failure rate such that when it goes out you won't be able to get them at any price.

My approach is to first make my wife happy and if possible temper her choices if she picks an appliance model I think will be failure-prone. When we remodeled our kitchen she wanted a Jenn-Aire electric double oven and a Viking gas stovetop. I knew Jenn-Aire has a miserable repair history, and that Viking is supposed to be a premium product. The Jenn-Aire lost a cooling fan right out of warranty; I fixed it and it has been OK since then. The Viking had multiple repair calls under warranty; they replaced the ignitor module and all the controls but the ignitors continued to act up. Since there was nothing left to replace after the module and controls, Viking ended up giving us a new stovetop. But only after my wife sent a letter to the president of Viking. It turned out they had a batch of bad ignitor modules, so they kept replacing the module with a bad part.

Good luck with your purchase. Your wife will love the switch to gas.

If you check closer, the electronic control panel
only comes with controls, I think you have to peal
the old face off your old control panel.
That's what I had to do, good luck. Perhaps a heat
gun would help. Closer to $200 for complete control
panel. My jenm-air was closer to $400

Any more I think one brand is just as good as the next. Sounds like you were on a roll, should have bought a micro range, and a refrig at the same time. Then everything will be new. I did that when I remolded my kitchen, now everything is getting old. I have since replaced my micro range. I was never a big fan of service guarantees, but I have one on my refrig. The repair man has been out three times. So far I have had a circuit board replaced, and a new ice maker motor.Stan

Neighbor had to buy a new refrig. He gave me his old one. It was completely out of freon. On the door he put the date he bought it. 12-24-07. The evaporator was 100% aluminum. I didn't even try to find the leak, scraped it out. There was an ice maker in it that was never used. I kept all the controls, ice maker and defrost element, both fans, and defrost timer. Most of that stuff can be used on other refrigs.

Gas Jenn Aire here trouble free 15 years. Only bad thing is the -29 degree air that comes through it in the winter with an east wind, Thank God prevailing winds are from north to west.