I have a 154" x 106" sectional with no chaise, and my 9'x12' rug sits right in front. So my top left rug corner sits right where you have that darkened/shaded V-corner. The rug ties the room together and it didn't make sense to hide half of it under the sectional. I also have quite a bit of space in front of the sectional that I didn't want to be bare hardwood. 9'x12' rug will work for your sectional, you'll just have to play around with how much will or will not sit under the sectional, which will depend on your room layout, walkways around it, etc.

I agree with sleevendog and Annie about using canning jars. I start with something that was stored in the food storage room in a 1/2-gallon wide-mouth jar, and as the food item is used, down-size the contents to a quart, pint and 1/2-pint, and they all use the same wide-mouth jar lid (I use both metal rings and lids and the plastic screw-on lids for jars, and metal lids I have spray-painted with chalkboard paint and use chalk pencils or liquid chalk markers to mark the contents on the lid.) For dry storage in the pantry, the quart to 1/2-pint jars I use take up the same amount of space since I store my jars on their side with the lid showing the contents of the jar. I have my shelves adjusted so they are the same space as a 1/2-gallon jar between them (and have between 75-80 jars in my pantry holding dry-goods). I stopped and counted 15 canning jars in my refrigerator. We also use a number of glass Pyrex storage bowls with plastic lids (1-cup and 2-cup). Hubby takes them to work in his lunch - so they are filled with leftovers from previous meals and stored in the freezer. They go from the freezer to his lunch bag, and then microwaved when he eats lunch. A plastic container I like to use are Ball Freezer Jars - the 8-oz. size often used for freezer jam works great for single-servings of soup/stew/broth, and they also come in 16-oz. size. I like the screw-on lids. These plastic jars stack nicely and the lids nest together. -Grainlady

Huge bloom there! The smaller looks to be as big as it's gonna get. As far as I know, each bloom won't increase in size after opening. They might open further, which makes them seem larger. It's always a nice surprise when every bloom opens. It feels like opening presents!

With traditional capped burners, the heat is all on the perimeter. And flare increases as you turn the burner higher. This means, unless you only use large pots, you do need different sized burners to work effectively. You also need pots that have good heat conductivity (i.e. clad copper cores). With uncapped burners (such as Bluestar's signature open burner design), the heat is distributed across the entire bottom of the pot, and the area that is heated doesn't really change when you adjust the burners. In that case, you are much better off having a one-size-fits-all for your burners. It gives you a lot more flexibility. It also allows you to use rolled carbon steel pans much more efficiently, as you won't have hot spots despite the thin rather thin material. Same for cooking with cast iron which despite all its advantages does suffer from poor conductivity. And with Bluestar, which I am particularly partial to, you even get a wok burner for free. Remove the top part of the grate, and the bottom part bowl becomes a wok burner.