Brooke here.
Brooke: “Hey, a blog reader commented ‘Regarding the 3″ mystery: Is the stove centered under the ceiling peak?‘”
Brown: “Hah. Yeah. It is.”
Brooke: “Okay, that explains why the cabinets aren’t aligned.”
Brown: “No, it explains where they put the stove. It doesn’t explain why they didn’t measure and install the right cabinets.”
Flying by night 
Gotta admit, I’m in Brown’s corner on this one 🙂 A half-assed job’s still a half-assed job, even if you now understand where things began to go Terribly Wrong.
They probably didn’t plan for the stove to be centered when they measured and bought the cabinets. Then at some point during the installation, somebody decided the stove should be centered, but didn’t want to pay for new cabinets. Still half-assed.