I have cooked on all three and the TEK IR is the only gas grill that cooks as well as charcoal. It's advantages over charcoal are that it is quick to set up, easy to clean up and does an excellent job of creating the charcoal taste. As many here know, the flavor is created by the smoke from the fat striking the hot surface be it charcoal or something else. The higher the IR energy (from gas or charcoal) and the less the flame, the more smoke generated rather than being turned into additional flame. The TEK creates a great deal of smoke because the IR glass sits between the flame and the dripping grease. On older style IR burners there is still an open flame to ignite the grease drippings reducing the amount of smoke to add flavor. With charcoal, once the embers are glowing red, it is emitting a lot of IR and much less to no flame and hence produces a lot of smoke and flavor. I have owned the FireMagic and I would not purchase another. The burners are cast SS but they still do rust over time and the flavor grills wear out too. They are very hard to clean and the heat was not anywhere near as good as the advertisements. If you are the type that never clean a grill and don't mind a gritty looking grill it may not matter. I am the type that wants it to look clean and inviting each time and the self cleaning feature along with the dishwasher removal panels makes the TEK a breeze to clean and keep looking nice. For me that was worth a lot. The more conventional grills like the Firemagic, even with their ceramic infrared burner are not even a close match.

Well, this is the quandry I'm in. The house was priced in the middle of comps when we put it on the market but I guess due to it being early March, most of the comps were from last Fall when the market was better. So even though it hasn't been on the market long as mentioned above, it's suddenly overpriced due to the falling market. I've been discussing the next price drop with my wife. At least we've had a couple of showings in the last week. I wouldn't call Waldorf considerably outside the DC metro area. I'd put it IN the metro area, maybe the extended area, but it's in there just as much as you'd put Gaithersburg, Germantown, Woodbridge, or Manassas in the metro area. Waldorf is probably a shorter commute to downtown than any of those other places in both distance and time (I used to live in one of those places, I know). Many people in my neighborhood work in DC or farther. The neighborhood is a mix of ages (young couples to retirees), occupations (blue and white collar), and races (but mainly black and white). I know the ranch layout isn't popular, but even leaving out the basement, you get about the same square footage of other houses in the price range. Add the finished basement and it's significantly more just due to the wide footprint of the house. So maybe if you go all the way to southern Charles or St. Mary's counties, or some of the less desirable areas closer in, you can get a "lot more house," but I haven't seen that in the immediate area. FWIW the heat pump keeps up with the cold with no problem. It's a very efficient house. Sorry to sound defensive. I think at this point it's mainly about the price.

I've heard good things about Washington Marble in Ijamsville. ADI in White Flint did a beautiful job in our master bath, but the designer coordinated all that for us....their bid was on the high end for our kitchen...we used a different contractor for the kitchen than the bath and they preferred Flintstone in Rockville so we went with them...they did a decent job of installing , even though they mismeasured an outlet and contractor had to move the outlet over a few inches on the spot..but we had issues with them afterwards so can't heartily recommend them. Same with Fernando's off Crabbs Branch...nice work, but it took them a month to get our fireplace hearth (18x54 plain slab) fabricated and installed which totally screwed up the tilesetter's and our schedule. We found a remnant to match our kitchen at Franco's Marble in Rockville for the powder room and they did a nice job. Flintstone had sold our kitchen remnant which we had on hold, among other things...long story. Hope this helps!

We are in the process of building an outdoor kitchen and have decided to use a built-in 36 inch Lynx grill. As I was searching for the best price online I noticed that every seller had them at the exact same price. Is there a place to get Lynx grills below MSRP? Do they ever go on sale? Do they sell "open box" or demo items? If anybody has experience purchasing these grills at a lower than advertised price I would appreciate some feedback.