I have a Bluestar range top. My experience is that the burners light on 1 to 4 clicks. If there is a pan on the burner it tends to be a 1-2 click light. I believe that the pan contains the gas and blocks drafts. The 22K burners are the quickest to light the simmer burner routinely takes the most clicks to light. I infer that it is related to the amount of gas around the spark (click). The shutter adjustment definitely has an effect on the ease of ignition. My experience with other gas range tops is that as they age (the Bluestar is still new) they become harder to light. This could be probably be migrated by cleaning and adjusting frequently. I had a Wolf (commercial hot plate) that, without a pan on the burner, you had to blow on the burner to get it light. This is just not a big deal for me; I consider it part of the cooking with gas experience. It sounds to me that given your concerns you would be a good candidate for induction.

Thank you all so much, antss, buff, trevor, and emilner! I'm placing my order tomorrow. If I may...2 follow-up questions. My cabinetmaker came today and said he could easily do either the 46" or 58" ventilator. 1) Since the difference between the 46" and 58" is only a little over $100, would there be any reason not to go with the 58", just to gain the additional capture and possibly cut down on noise? 2) Your advice re: depth is duly noted. The Wolf 36" is 27" deep. The Best by Broan ventilator is 22.5" deep. Is this a sufficient depth? I asked him if he could mount it "forward", meaning out a bit towards the front of the hood, so it catches the smoke from the front burners. He said no problem. I guess my alternative would be to look in to a custom ventilator, one that is a few inches deeper...but I don't know if this is necessary (if the standard 22.5" depth is sufficient). Cannot thank you enough!! This has been so much easier with the help of so many kind GWers.

decoenthusiaste The door is steel by I want to replace it completely because it is very drafty and load of cold come in the house in the winter so we could go anything here. Do your top panels snap out for windows? You mean the garage? It will be nice, they dont right now but it is an idea I could keep for the future and replace the door. The fence is already there I'll add some pictures. It frames the back yard and its been weathered wood since 2005 :/ The tree is a crab apple, you are right that I need to change the landscaping, it is something I haven't thought about yet (so many things!) I loved those pictures with the day lilies the do very well in our climate, diverse the bed a little with different types of flowers. I will trim the tree and take it off the ground for sure. Thank you so much for all the ideas!! And these are the color I was considering to stain the fence: Which one do you like?

I could echo a lot of what everyone wrote. Especially allison's list of things that have remained the same. The only difference is that I'm not as keen on fall colors. I love blue and white in fabrics as well as transferware, yellow (especially for walls), and have been adding more green and red/coral in recent years. My taste has been pretty consistent over the years (I'm in my mid-50s). I started off like shivece, following my parents' style with the comfortable couch, classic chairs, Persian rugs, but ended up going off in a more English country direction. Plus my parents were never interested in antiques, unfortunately. In high school I started buying shelter magazines and tearing out pages which I kept in a binder which I took to college with me lol. I remember swooning over and dreaming about floral Sanderson curtains back then. I've always loved the English country look, well-worn and well-loved full of interesting and meaningful things. Since high school and college, I've pretty much refined and distilled my tastes. I'm much less tempted by decorating "tangents" now that I'm more certain and confident in my tastes. The major change I think has been a change in preference from blowsy, chintz-y florals to more restrained florals and block prints. I have to be careful all the time to remember to vary the size of prints because I'm naturally drawn to smaller prints. In my late 20s, I had first a rental and then a co-op apartment in NYC, where I was born and raised, and a good job and was able to start buying some good furniture to the vintage pieces I'd bought. A few antiques, a good sofa, some nice reproduction pieces from Baker. At the time, Macy's and Altman's had beautiful furniture departments (with antique, new, and reproduction items), and ABC Carpet & Home wasn't trendy and overpriced. Things came to a screeching halt in terms of decorating style a few years later when I married and moved to a farm in rural western Canada. This was before the internet, and the only place to buy furniture that wasn't a six-hour roundtrip was Sears. My husband had bought the farm with a sad little farmhouse just before we met (terrible timing). He had painted everything a cold hospital white (he thought it looked clean), painted the baseboards a cool light grey because he thought it was practical (this was in the early 90s so he was ahead of the curve lol), in the kitchen a horrible white, grey, and mauve-y pink sheet vinyl flooring, and in the rest of the house, cheap grey wall-to-wall carpeting. The only furniture he had was, echoes of czarinalex, a horrible 70s sofa -- orange, mustard, and dark brown acrylic plaid -- and matching swivel/rocking arm chair. The place looked better with my furniture (the sofa got exiled to the basement, and the chair stayed with a sheet over it because it was VERY comfortable and made a great nursing chair for three kids in five years), though I could never get my Persian rug to stop "creeping" in the living room over the wall to wall carpet. We did repaint the walls, but all of the flooring stayed until it wore out and could be replaced; plus we knew we wanted to build a new house and wanted to save our money for that instead of replacing what was, as my grandparents would have said, "serviceable". I did manage to find some gems here and there -- like the large Chinese blue and white fishbowl planters I found at a garage sale (which I keep ferns in). And then the internet arrived, and I was able to read and learn more, including at GardenWeb and blogs (for the love of a home, Ben Pentreath, etc) and find stores and shops online, esp Etsy and Ebay. About nine years ago my parents died and left a NYC apartment full of stuff like oriental rugs and Kindel and Henkel Harris furniture, and a vacation house in the Caribbean with a few things. Through some hard work and creativity, we were able to bring back a number of things, and planned around them for the new house we finished building last year. It's not always easy to hang tight when a favorite all of a sudden becomes trendy. Though living in the back of beyond, sometimes it's helpful when certain things -- like ikat, suzani, block prints, blue and white porcelain/ceramics -- become popular because then they end up at places like Anthropologie, Pottery Barn, and Winners/TJ Maxx where I have access to them : ) . Especially when the trend is truly over and done with, and the markdowns are huge lol. allison, my parents were firm believers in your rule #1 and I've tried to follow it but sometimes it can be hard, especially living here when I'm never sure what I might be able to find/source.