I mentioned in my recent post that I had so many things breaking at a time. What I didn't mention, though, is that my stove had been breaking for a long time, and it wasn't a new thing. I was just suffering with a barely working stove, making everything take longer since I could only cook two pots at a time, and one of those pots cooked very slowly, and the other burner sometimes would either try to explode or flutter out. The oven was problematic from when I got it. For some reason the steam dripping down the inside of the oven made the bottom of the oven rust and flake off from the very beginning. It was gross and I couldn't justify getting rid of it just for the aesthetic, so I kept my nasty looking oven for far too long. It was only after the burners were really affecting my life negatively that I decided I'd get a new oven. (And only once I was able to ascertain that I didn't need to buy a new fridge. I could live with two not so great functioning burners; I do not ever want to live without a fridge again- 8 days was far more than enough!!!)
When I was looking for an oven, I decided to see if I could find a larger one than what I had before. Because even when the burners were working, if I had a larger pot or a wok it often took up half the stovetop and I could maybe cook one other thing on it. As someone who does a lot of cooking and dabbled in catering for a few weeks last year (before my health issues didn't let me continue), I saw how much extra time it took me to cook when I was not able to use all my burners in one go. More burners, I knew, would be very, very useful for me even just cooking for my family, but especially if my body starts cooperating more and I want to attempt catering again. I'd seen stoves with five burners on them but the fifth burner is a small one in the middle of the other four, and it still has the same surface area as the standard stovetop, so it wouldn't help me at all, because you can't use them at the same time. So I decided to look for a stove/oven that had 6 burners, but all of them were ridiculously expensive, at least 3 or 4 times the price of a standard stove/oven, even the cheapest ones that existed. Then I looked on the price comparison website for a 5 burner stove, attempting to see if one existed that wasn't with overlapping burners and I found quite a few that were only about 75 dollars more than the standard one. I was shocked at how little extra five-burner stoves cost, even when they were extra wide. With only that different of a price, I knew I had to get it.
The only thing was the width. My house is great, but it is small. The kitchen is combined with a living room and dining room, and I had to make sure that everything would fit. There is no nook for my oven, it just goes next to the counter, so I had no actual limitations in terms of size. I did, however, need to be able to fit my furniture into the room. My dining room table was next to the oven and I measured- at 90 cm (30 cm wider than my old oven, I think) it still gave enough room to have my dining room table there. But just barely.
I ordered it. So it would be tight. That's fine. I pull the table out anyhow for meals, more towards the center of the room, so I'd do that whenever our family would have a meal, I thought.

The oven arrived. It was beautiful! So big and wide and with so much room to cook! Exactly what I wanted!
But when I put my table next to it, I saw just how difficult it would be to have the table there. So I decided to switch it all up, and reconfigure my entire space.