Electricians and Inspection and old wiring

Monday and Tuesday was the Time of the Electricians. It was pretty painful. I haven't a high opinion of professional electricians, colored by HomoDommi's sheer disgust for their methods (which is, in his experience, always to find the shortest route between two points, regardless of elegance) and by an old memory of Peaceable referring (at least 30 years ago) to some conventional wisdom about the lack of intelligence in electricians as a group. But I've never interacted with one before.  I do like the guy we hired -- he asked the right questions when he was here to give an estimate, and had some suggestions that were sound to me. (I had liked the other electrician who bid, too, but for the opposite reasons -- he was older than me, didn't say much, and seemed to view this as a completely normal job, nothing special).

Monday morning brought the young, questioning/suggesting guy, with an assistant.  They said, "Hey" and "Dude" a lot, so I refer to them in my mind as "kids" but HomoDommi says the assistant is pushing 35. (I'm not sure how he can tell, but I trust his judgement.)  They set to with hammers and saws, and lots of bangs and buzzes, and the sounds of plaster collapsing. I sat in my office cringing at every collapse echoing up the stairwell, anxious that the history of the kitchen was being destroyed before I had time to work it out.

It took them two full days, which I'm sure was longer than they intended, and while they did take out a large swathe at countertop height, they left most of the walls intact. We now have outlets for appliances that will someday sit on the counters, three lights in the ceiling; outlets and switches for lights, dishwasher, garbage disposal; and wiring hanging out of the wall for under-cabinet lighting (to be finalized when we have wall cabinets installed to be underlit).  It looks like a competent job to me.

And apparently it is competent.  This morning, the city inspector came by to check on the plumbing and the electricity "rough ins".  She was friendly, but not a big talker.  She approved both.

She did have to check one thing. We are keeping our existing stove, which has a double oven, a small one on top not much bigger than a toaster oven, and an almost full-sized one on the bottom.  We love this range. However, what stopped the inspector up is that it has one of those big ol' three-prong plugs.  Apparently new ranges have "four-wire plugs" (still 220V) (I don't know if they still are three-prongs, but I'd guess not). Code requires an outlet for a four-wire plug. The law was grand-fathered in, however, so that if there is still original lathe and plaster around the plug, you don't have to have a four-wire.  She made it clear that she thought the electricians were skirting around Code by not taking out the lathe-and-plaster (tut tut). Apparently standard practice now is to rip out all the plaster during a remodel as extensive as ours, so that the wall is open, and then easier to replace such outlets.  This relieves future owners of the work to install the new kind of outlet (which will require ripping out the lathe and plaster around it, not to mention any drywall over it, as code insists) when they want to replace a then-broken-down stove sometime in the future.

So now we have a new decision: should we get a new range (and get an updated electrical) in favor of those future owners?  This is the only appliance we had planned to keep in the new kitchen, and I've been worrying that it will show wear and tear when up against shiny new sink, microwave, dishwasher and fridge. Should fix what ain't broke?  It will cost another $1,000 or so to be responsible to those unknown future owners (including that cost of getting the electricity fixed, too).

Yet more to consider.... I'm getting really tired of all these yet-more-to-considers.