Yesterday we went shopping for kitchen appliances at Sears. We bought our appliances from them when we renovated our existing kitchen and felt comfortable that they stocked all of the good brands at a good price (plus they have no interest and no payments for 12 months on their Sears card which is a big plus right now!). We need to determine which appliances we’ll be going with so that Altima Kitchens can work with the measurements when planning our kitchen.

We ran into Sastri (located at the Eaton Centre Sears store) who was our rep from last time. He’s very helpful and knowledgeable and is very competitive on pricing.

We’re looking for the following items:

• side-by-side refrigerator

• gas range

• dishwasher

• hood for range

• counter microwave (not built into the hood)

We had done some research online and were drawn to the KitchenAid Architect line. We have KitchenAid appliances now and we’ve had good luck with them. Certainly they are a little bit more expensive but you seem to get what you pay for.

When we first walked into the showroom we saw a display for the Kenmore Pro series of appliances. They looked great and the pricing was well below comparable KitchenAid professional versions (but above the KitchenAid Architect prices). However when we started to look into them further we found that the quality just wasn’t there. Knobs were already coming off the floor models and the level and quality of craftsmanship just didn’t seem to be the same.

We left the showroom with the feeling that we really wanted to invest in the fridge and range (since they will be the show pieces) and go with less expensive models for the dishwasher, microwave and hood. We will still buy good quality for those items but will most likely splurge on the fridge and stove.

Given the open concept nature of the main floor the kitchen is crucial to the house (even more so then usual in this case). So we want to make sure that we get it exactly right.

As soon as we receive final pricing and choose our final models we will upload them.