Question: Budget question: I’m doing a new kitchen and wonder what your recommendations on appliances are.
Answer: First thing is this: We know all projects have budgets and saving money—smartly—is key to a project you’ll be happy with over time. As far as brands go there’s a lot of parity across most of the major brands and price points from what we have seen (in fact, we just saw our 2-year-old microwave break; hello $100 service call.) As far as quality, our advice is to buy the best appliances you can afford.
Appliances are a tempting place to skimp and the reason is: in order to keep appliances affordable and attractive to buyers lots of manufacturers have sucked some quality out of the products without reducing features. What that means is that something’s gotta give and that something is often durability. In other words, an inexpensive appliance is likely to break much sooner than a more robust model.
So, an appliance that otherwise looks good can sometimes not be built all that well. And in a world where “you get what you pay for” is more often than not a truism, buy as far up as you can.
It’s the same advice I have for buying tools.
