Range hood, oven and outdoor kitchen cleaning in Morris County, NJ

The kitchens we see in Morris County, New Jersey

Start with the villages. Chatham and Madison grew up along the Morris and Essex Line, and the side streets are lined with colonials, Victorians and foursquares that have had the kitchen rebuilt at least once. That rebuild usually brought a pro range, and in Morris the range tends to have a griddle down the middle, like the Wolf in the photo above with its stainless covers closed and a slate backsplash rising behind it. A griddle cooks beautifully. It also spits grease up into the hood, down the backsplash and into the gap where the range meets the counter. On a slate wall like that one we’d rather steam and hand-wipe than scrub, because soft stone shows every hard pass.

Mendham, Harding Township and Chester are a different drive and a different job. The lots are bigger, the driveways are longer, and the kitchen keeps going out the back door: a built-in grill, a side burner, and on plenty of these properties a wood-fired pizza oven on the terrace. A wood-fired oven doesn’t get greasy the way a grill does. It collects soot and creosote in the dome and ash packed into the floor, which is why wood-fired pizza oven cleaning is its own process. What we won’t do is rebuild a cracked dome or reset loose firebrick. That’s a mason’s work, and we’ll tell you if we see it.

Mountain Lakes is its own place, older houses on wooded lots set around the lakes, many with kitchens added long after the house went up. Morristown mixes big old homes with townhouses and condos near the Green, where the hood is compact and the grease has less room to hide. Florham Park, Boonton Township, Kinnelon, Denville and Randolph fill in the rest of the county for us. Bernardsville sits just over the line and is listed with Somerset.

What Chatham, Madison and Mendham homeowners book most

The hood, then the top of the range. A hood cleaning from baffles to blower comes first because the hood has usually gone longest without attention, and once the baffles are out on the drop cloth the next question is whether the griddle and burners can be done before everything goes back together. They can.

That second job is steaming the griddle, grates and burner caps: sealed burners, cast grates, caps and igniters steamed and detailed, and the griddle cleared of carbon without losing the seasoning you’ve built up. Honestly, we think most griddles get over-scrubbed at home. A steel plate that’s been cooked on for years has earned its finish, and the goal is to take off what’s burnt, not what’s working.

Under a range like that sit one or two ovens, so steam cleaning the ovens under that range is the natural third piece of the same visit, with the racks, the door glass and the gasket included. Outside, the grill and the island get outdoor kitchen cleaning for the terrace once the covers come off in spring, and the pizza oven can go on the same morning if it’s cold.

Every make comes apart in its own order, a Wolf differently from a BlueStar or a Capital, and the order each range brand comes apart is written up brand by brand. How many people in Harding or Mendham Borough search for any of this in a month? Google doesn’t say. Places that size fall under its reporting floor, so we go by the calls instead of pretending to have a number.

Getting to you on Route 24 and Route 202

Route 24 is the spine. It brings us past Chatham and Florham Park into Morristown, then carries on as a two-lane road through Mendham Borough and Mendham Township toward Chester. Main Street in Chatham and Madison is Route 124. Route 202 runs south out of Morristown through Harding toward Bernardsville, and for Mountain Lakes, Denville, Kinnelon, Boonton Township and Randolph it’s I-287, I-80 or Route 10.

Out in horse country the driveway can be a quarter of the trip, and some properties have a gate. Send us the code, or the name of whoever will meet us, and tell us which door is closest to the kitchen. A gravel drive is no trouble; the floor gets covered from that door to the range before anything comes apart. The one place parking takes planning is Morristown, around the Green, and we’d much rather settle it on the phone than circle the block. Scheduling runs Monday to Friday. Urgent requests go by phone.

Nearby

A short run east on Route 24 puts us among Essex County’s older pro kitchens in Short Hills and Millburn. South of Harding, Bernardsville, Far Hills and Basking Ridge belong to the Somerset Hills estates past Harding. Summit sits across the Passaic River from Chatham and is covered on Summit, Westfield and the rest of Union.

Send a picture of the range top and one of the terrace, and we’ll plan the whole morning around what’s in them.