*Today’s post was made possible by Lowe’s, and features gifted product for the purposes of a candid review. All opinions are my own.

Aside from the delightful excuse to be a reclusive homebody for weeks on end, there was one other good thing to come from experiencing the pandemic: I discovered my love for cooking! I spent many, many hours devouring (pun unintended) cooking shows on YouTube during those early months of lockdown, and, as a result, I started experimenting more than I ever had before in our kitchen. It was exciting to have a brand new-to-me creative outlet, and my passion for cooking has only gotten stronger as time goes on.

Don’t worry—I’m not planning on ditching my home décor theme here on DGD to become a food blogger, but I have been given the opportunity to share some light foodie content here and there thanks to my partnerships with Our Place and a few other kitchen-related brands. Those campaigns have been a dream come true for me as a wannabe chef, and they have sort of lit a fire under my bum, so to speak, to get our tiny retro kitchen in better shape so I can whip up the very best meals for John and me.

The most recent update to our space (which I’m sure you knew was coming because of today’s blog title and photos) has been a new stove. We had inherited an old white Kenmore when we bought this house, and it, honestly, worked great right up until the day we sold it on Facebook Marketplace last November. Genuinely, the only thing our old oven didn’t have going for it was the color and design (I had my heart set on stainless steel). With more and more food-related sponsored content popping up on my editorial calendar, I realized that I was feeling a little hesitant to film anything on our old stove. I was embarrassed to share videos and photos of it because I knew some folks out there would hyper-fixate on the less-than-ideal aesthetic of our dated oven.

Maybe I shouldn’t readily admit the fact that I replaced our old oven purely for aesthetic reasons, but everybody’s got to have some kind of motivation for making specific home purchases, right? And I should clarify that I definitely was one of those people who hyper-fixated on the bad-looking design of our old oven. I want to love everything in our home, and that includes my stove. I knew I would get so much personal satisfaction out of spending time working at a nice-looking oven rather than a dated one, so it was worth the time and expense to order something new that worked for our meal prep needs and that looked good in our space while doing it.

Anyway, that’s a very long way of saying that I wanted a more modern-looking oven, and we got the perfect one, in my opinion. I did plenty of research on Lowes.com to find the right stove for us, and that ended up being the Whirlpool Flexible Cooktop Freestanding Electric Range. In full disclosure, I was gifted $400 to spend on this oven from Lowe’s in exchange for today’s honest review, and we wanted the rest of the new range cost to be covered by the sale of our old oven on Facebook Marketplace. I looked long and hard to find one that fit within that budget of around $600 (i.e. $400 from Lowe’s and $200 from the sale of our old oven), and this one’s price tag was just right at $575-ish, depending on the current sale season.

Money wasn’t the only consideration, though, of course. I wanted to make sure we got a stove that had some nice features to it that suited our typical meal prep routine. I love a glass cooktop because it’s really easy to clean, and I’m a very, very (very!) messy cook. Over the past few months, I’ve really loved the flexible dual element feature on the stovetop, too. In other words, I can choose between heating the front elements to a small or large circumference based on the size of the pan I’m cooking with. That works really well for me, and means that I can always cook toward the front of the stove. There’s also a “Keep Warm” feature on the oven that we really like, especially when hosting my parents for dinner and we need to keep something lightly heated until dinnertime.

And, of course, you know I love the design of our new Whirlpool oven! The sleek sharp lines are just right for our more modern interior style, and we love the stainless steel accents alongside the black elements and surfaces. We have zero complaints so far, and I’m so glad that I decided to make this upgrade, even if my reasoning was a little bit indulgent. As I said, I think it’s really important to love every single thing about your home, especially the pieces that you use every single day. Life’s too short to settle for less when it comes to your daily routine, so treat yourself when you can, I say.

Next up on our light kitchen remodel? A new hood vent to replace the old grease-caked brown one that we’re currently living with. You know I love original retro details in a home, but this one has seen better days and just doesn’t run as efficiently as something new would. What color do you think we should get? Stainless to match the new oven, or should we go white to match the cabinets? Comment and let me know what you think.

*This post contains affiliate links, which means that I earn a small commission when you purchase products that I recommend at no additional cost to you. This allows me to provide free creative content for you to read, save, and share. Rest assured that I never recommend products we wouldn’t use or don’t already love ourselves.