I'm glad I stumbled upon this thread. We thought we wanted a FD, but have been re-thinking it a bit now. In my 61 years, all I have ever had was a top freezer, other than a few wretched months with a side-by-side in a rental. We are building a new house, and are using a super cheap 14 cu/ft as a place-holder. One thing in this thread caught my attention- If you load the fridge from a counter on either side, there will always be a half door in the way. Although I could load ours from the peninsula, it is a bit of a distance. it will be much easier to load/unload to the counter to the left of the fridge. We have 66" from the front of the fridge to the peninsula, so even with a single door wide open, we'll have 30-32 inches clearance- plenty to walk past. I was able to recess the fridge 5" into the wall- well worth the extra effort. I think we're going to go with a smallish (20-22 cu/ft) single door bottom freezer. We'll have to see if my VCW (vertically challenged wife) is comfortable reaching the back of the top shelf, though.

It's funny to read this thread from 5 years ago hearing people talking about travertine as dated. My wife and I just bought a house and it is a pretty big upgrade to go from the included tile backsplash to a travertine backsplash. I guess my point is, and I doubt anyone is even reading this anyway 5 years later, but my point is that I agree with the people that say go with what you like and don't worry about anyone else's opinions. It's your house. Why do people always concern themselves with how other people will like their things, when they are not the ones spending all their time there.

Old uncle had two freezers and I defrosted and cleaned them when I came to spend a couple of months with him seven years ago after the death of his wife. His major pains caused us to worry that, going out to care for his cattle in his mid 80s, he might fall in a snowbank and be unable to get up: with no one in the house to call help after a short while, he could well freeze, so I stayed with him for a couple of months till his cattle went out to pasture. On his death, five years ago, his nephew got the newer chest-type one and the older chest-type one remained in the basement, so when I rented the house from the new owner I've been using it. Most freezers keep goods near zero Fahrenheit and most of the ones in a frig keep things just a few degrees below freezing, so folks with separate freezers say that it keeps ice cream better - meat and a number of other things, also, for that matter. I'm pretty sure that the old freezer hasn't been defrosted since I did it several years ago - I know that it hasn't in the last five that I've lived here. It does need it, fairly soon. As I live 8 miles from a village, where the small store is somewhat more expensive, and 13 miles from the city, I like to have various items available without making special trips, and like to buy a quantity of goods on sale. While I store some produce from my fairly large garden (just tripled in size, at least) in the basement, a major portion of it is best stored in frozen state ... and I do that for not only my needs, but my son's, a friend's and a couple of agencies that feed the poor, the homeless and some addicted persons in rehab, as well. Frost-free freezers as it freezes for a while ... then heats up for a short time ... then re-cools the stuff that began to thaw a bit while the heating was going on ... uses more energy, that's not only costly to produce, but adds to both climate heating and pollutants. It seems to me that the cycling will mean that frozen goods should be used sooner and will deteriorate more rapidly. Same story for frost-free frigs, for that matter. Also, it will of necessity add to your electric bill. Freezers with doors cost more to operate, also, for, as someone said, the cold spills out to the floor and your ankles the minute you open the door, then must be replaced when you close it. Chest freezers may have a little heated air enter the box when the lid is opened, but only minimally so, so there is little extra cooling required after the lid comes down. Freezers with doors add more to your electric bill, as well. To simplify finding things in a chest freezer, make a map on a fairly large sheet of paper, in pencil to allow for editing, or on a white board, of the goods in the box. Use five large boxes numbered 1 - 5 for locations back to front, with small boxes in each of four lines in each of the five boxes, the small boxes labelled A - K for left to right and each large box has four lines labelled a - d showing depth. 1 Aa Ba Ca Da Ea Fa Ga for stuff at back, on top Ab Bb Cb Db Eb Fb Gb for stuff at back, just below Ac Bc Cc Dc Ec Fc Gc for stuff at back, near bottom Ad Bd Cd Dd Ed Fd Gd for stuff at back, at bottom 2 Same routine, for stuff next to back, on top, just below, near bottom and at bottom 3 Same system, for stuff in middle of back to front, on top, just below, etc. 4 Same again, for stuff next to front, on top, just below, etc. 5 Same again, for stuff at front, on top, just below, etc. Use different number of lines or boxes as it appears to suit your need. Chief problem - when moving goods to get at stuff behind or below it, to replace it in the same place. Leave large margins for notes. Write small in the boxes, so when something far down is used and the item above it drops down ... best to erase, but works to cross out the the item gone, use an arrow to show that the item above has dfropped down. You noted that one respondent spoke of her freezer as being 40 years old. They don't make them to last that long, now: we're lucky if modern frigs last for much more than ten years. Don't tell me that modern engineers are stupider - they want them to wear out early, so that we need to buy new. Let's demand that they make them to last for 50 years ... at least. We'd be money ahead if I bought one for my house, then in ten years continued to use my old one but paid for one to be "given" to someone in a Third World country who can now afford one, with him paying the price into one of the development banks that make small loans to other Third World people to help them get started in business. The ones built in 20, 30 and 40 years could be shipped to the third world to meet their growing demands. In 50 years, the one that I bought now will need replacing ... but it'll be by my kids, as I'll have long since departed this mortal coil (mine would have been sold at a yard sale when they cleared out my house). Oh - that'd not work for me: I live in a rented house, with frig. provided. In any case - this house'll still need a frig (if it's still standing). I hope that you're having a great summer week. ole joyful

It's true that there is some insulation effect, but there also is, if not as much, with glass and pyroceram. Corningware is supposedly made of the stuff they created to cover space ship nose cones and protect them from the heat of friction with the atmosphere, or something like that. Steel is a conductor, but a relatively poor one. There shouldn't be more than a 10 minute, at the outside, difference in cook times for a lasagna in any of them, and likely less to none. Checking the oven is a great idea. Though...since stoneware works fine for bread and smaller things, it's potentially a preheating problem. Pink, how long do you preheat your oven for? It's well known that when the air at the sensor is at the correct temperature for the pre-heat signal to go off, the entirety of the oven, the walls, etc., often isn't completely hot. This is true with convection ovens as well, though not as dramatically since the convection speeds the heating time. I can see how with the mass of a big lasagna and the insulating effect that Ci_lantro pointed out, the stoneware might take relatively longer in an oven that had just barely come to heat. If you wanted to give it one last try, heat the oven for at least an hour, and set the stoneware dish by a sunny window in the morning, or put it somewhere else warm to come up to at least room temperature before building the lasagna, it might make a difference.