Baking like blue-bloods

It comes in 15 colors with a host of options. It can be custom-made to your specifications. It will draw sighs of envy as your friends run their hands down the European styling and smooth finish.

A new sports car? No. It’s an Aga Range, imported from England, and it will cost you about $15,000.

“It’s the Porsche, the Bentley, the Rolls-Royce of stoves,” says Norma Taylor, Aga’s eastern regional manager.

Of course, if you get one, you might have to upgrade the rest of the kitchen, too, from the KitchenAid professional mixer to the All-Clad cookware.

Never have so many people put so much thought into what goes into a kitchen. Gone are the days of pots and pans lasting the length of a marriage. Goodbye, four-burner stove. So long, laminate countertop.

Americans are remodeling the most-used room of the home at a record pace, spending more money than ever on counters, cooktops and all the associated accouterments.

Remodeling magazine estimates that the average cost of an upscale remodeling job in the Washington area is $81,748. Sure, there are mansions in Potomac that need to have the high-end materials, but Jim McCoy, owner and president of the Kitchen Guild, a D.C.-area design and remodeling company, says even owners of small town houses and condos are opting for stainless-steel appliances and fancy coffee makers.

To keep up with the demand, Mr. McCoy’s company has started Express by Kitchen Guild, a remodeling service that offers high-end materials — such as one would see in an upper-brackets home — at a more affordable $20,000 to $50,000. This service is aimed at owners of smaller homes who are seeking the look of a high-end kitchen.

“The kitchen industry certainly has changed,” he says. “We are doing really nice kitchens in relatively modest homes. Absolutely, it can be a status symbol. But some of it is practical — a nice kitchen is going to add value to your home. In an expensive home, it will accelerate the sale of your house when you go to sell. So in that sense, it is not as impractical as a $140,000 Porsche.”

A confluence of events helped create the current kitchen madness, Mr. McCoy says. He says his business saw a dramatic upturn after September 11, 2001, when people wanted to stay home and spend more time with their families.

Around the same time, the Federal Reserve Board lowered interest rates, and housing values started climbing, giving many homeowners access to home equity money to fuel their remodeling dreams. Meanwhile, the cost of high-end materials such as granite started falling, and TV cooking shows became very popular.

Suddenly, it wasn’t so far out of reach to cook in the same kind of space as TV chefs Bobby Flay or Emeril Lagasse.

“It is now much less expensive to keep up with the Joneses,” Mr. McCoy says. “You can even get entry-level appliances in stainless steel now, which contributes to that look of a professional kitchen.”

Refrigerator fantasies

Peter Patel knows what he wants. He has done a few years of research and can see the perfect kitchen in his mind.

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