The enamel is nice! It always looks new if taken care of, although it can chip if hit. The painted model can simply be repainted if needed. It's really personal taste. I'm surprised they only want $400 extra, i thought was an $800 upgrade?
Yeah not a bk dealer so i have no clue what the bottom line on one would be. I was just commenting that no discounts is not nessecarily a bad thing.
Not really, I've owned a few enameled stoves and still have one from 1984. A good enamel job is pretty tough. That said, they don't like to be abused. The blue-gray enamel finish on Jotuls and some Hearthstones is a good compromise between beauty and durability.
In your opinion it is worth the extra money. In mine it isnt. I see hundreds of stoves a year and i see more enamel stove that look like crap and cant be fixed than painted ones. And again if you have to paint it every year you are either using crappy paint or you are overfiring the stove. But to each their own.
The blue/black isn’t porcelain, it’s a very durable baked enamel finish. The others were referring to porcelain enamel, it’s damaged pretty easily.
Most enamel failures that I have seen are from either mechanical abuse or overheating. We have hadn neither issue on the Jotuls we've owned. The Ashford should do much better as the jacket doesn't get up to the high temps that a straight cast iron stove does. BK did a nice job on the enameling. I expect it will last a long time if not mistreated. The 10 yr old paint job on our T6 still looks great. That wasn't true of the full cast iron stove we owned.
