Looking for The Better Way. . .

Sosie and Bill are updating their kitchen in Sunol, California, and promise to keep us in the know. Here's the first installment from Stan's sister:

Present day situation. Looking for improvement.

Sosie writes:

The Problem: This is my fab kitchen, circa 1986. The gas stovetop is hot, hot, hot and can not be turned down past a Fast Simmer. Consequently, stove-top dinners have been a race between me and the smoke alarm, until I learned to call it the Dinner Bell. An avant-guard down-draft system housed in an enormous cupboard-sucking housing roared to dispel odors, until those interested in the evening tv news, or on exceptionally rare occasions, family conversations, would snap it off.
The electric convection oven worked ok, but non-convect operations produced lopsided results, and the re-calibration consultants never really fixed it.
All this was tolerable, but isn't there something better?