Love my Advantium 220, but Sharp has a good reputation as well. The Advantium really does it all - I baked 2 giant potatoes in 9 minutes flat with crunchy skin and a wonderful interior! I don't really bake cookies etc in it as I use my standard oven but have cooked a few residuals in it and they came out good. GD - I have the ISE 1 HP but not sure of the model. 1 HP is overkill but it is my security blanket - nothing is going to jam in that baby!! DW - I have a Miele but it is getting older so can't tell you about specific models. I do recommend taking your dishes to the appliance store and figuring how they fit. My normal dishes fit perfectly on the left or right side of the rack. My Magic Flute china fits best on the left side of the rack as they are tall and thin. My pantry dishes fit on either side - but the pantry bowls definitely fit best on the left side of the rack. I can pop 12-14 place settings (Dinner plates, salad plates, BB plates and small dessert dishes and the silverware) into the DW. I can put 12+ standard glasses into the DW as well - but giant red wine glasses will take up room and something will need to give.

LOL re "pimples"! true! but we don't actually have that many that are strictly "hallway" (since we don't have a lot of walls) - i think only 3 actually - 2 in the hallway connecting the kids' respective bedrooms (just around the corner from the staircase), and one right outside our bedroom (across from the stair landing). In comparison, there will be 9 others that will be "staircase step lights". To have just 3 being different would make them stand out. our hallway walls are supposed to be off-white (staircase wall will be either plastered or tiled to resemble concrete). We thought about buying white ones to "blend in" but didn't like the "plastic" look :-I

@kmcg, I love having two handles---and thought we'd hate it when we first moved into our house. Instead, we chose the same style faucet for the remodel! We do have our hot water heater set at a pretty moderate temperature (enough for nice hot showers but low enough that it can't scald). So that means we can (and do) turn just the hot tap on when we want warm water, and just the cold tap on for cold. I rarely mix the two unless I'm running a big sink full of water for something or need lukewarm water for bread, so it effectively functions as a single handle faucet for most uses. If you keep your heater on a higher setting, you'd probably be mixing the two more. Our new faucet also has levers on the top of the faucet (like the two here), whereas the old one had cross handles on the front. I prefer the cross handles aesthetically and had fully intended to replace the levers (which just happened to be what came with our model faucet, since unlike most of the Chicago faucets in only came in one version...yay California regulations!) But I've found I really prefer the levers functionally, so we're keeping them. We have a bungalow-style kitchen, so the traditional look fits in nicely with the aesthetic (mix of white inset and gray frameless, soapstone counters, and white cast iron sink).

yep.. I had it on a stove and they ended up having to replace the stove. Now, it was their fault.. heh.. but... I had a stove that the main board went out on it a month after I got the warranty. The only thing that did not work was the self-clean aspect. They came out to replace the board and put the wrong one in. They were gone like 30 minutes and I called back telling them it was the wrong board and the stove was not working. They had already "lost the board" they had taken out. I tried to tell them to put the old board back in until the new board could be ordered. They kept ordering new boards, that would arrive at my house then a tech would come out and install it, and I kept calling and telling them they had ordered the wrong board. After about 4 weeks of this, I started to get annoyed and told them to get me a whole new stove, which they refused to do. So, I drove up to the closest store with my 3 month old daughter and told them I had no way to sterilize the bottles since I had no stove any longer and that they could explain to the news media when I drive down and show them my newborn baby...blah blah blah. I had a new stove 2 days later and they never came to pick up the old stove. WELL worth getting, even through all that. Russ