>>>"We can move the range and vent out an exterior wall. But what range do you recommend for a large family? We do a lot of cooking and baking--three meals a day all from scratch. Should we go commerical or can we get away with a less expensive range? A repairman came recently to fix our dishwasher and told me to go with a Thermador. He said it was basic, but we would not have as many repairs with it as with a GE Cafe, which has all of the electronics that can break."I agree with laat2's comment about parameter confusion. You seem to have ventured into the morass of high-end and pro-style appliances without the vocabulary needed to navigate these murky waters. Let's try to get a handle on the vocabulary. First, there are "pro-style" ranges and there are "commercial" ranges. Very different critters. Commerical stoves are what go into restaurants. No broilers in the ovens. no insulation on the sides or doors. (Bad idea with all those kids roaming around). They are set up for very large pans and continuous production cooking. You need to put them in a fire proof/resistant enclosure (generally, tile) and you need very serious ventilation systems (which will require make-up air and a fire supression system, as well. A lot more of costly than you might suspect from the prices of the stoves. Second, Viking, Thermador, et al are not "commercial appliances." They are residential ranges. The term often applied to them is "pro-style." Pro-style is sometimes a synonym for premium-priced luxury goods. Sometimes they are called "trophy stoves" which is a terms used when people buy them for their industrial (high-end) looks. Pro-style tends to be expensive but tend to have a more room on the cooktop than less expensive "standard" residential stoves. This is handy when you cook with several larger pans at the same time. They vary in how "basic" they are, however, particularly when it comes to oven functions. You also say you think you want "basic" meaning something with fewer components that can break than a GE Cafe might have. (Which, by the way, might be a pretty good choice for you in a 30" wide stove with the wide cooktop space and the extra "baking" oven. There has been a fiar amount of discussion of them here over the last couple of years and search will turn up those threads.) Apparently, your preferences inclines to stoves that do not depend on electronics and microprocessors to operate. You do understand that there are some trade-offs in this? If you give up processor-driven electronics, you also give up some conveniences, such as self-cleaning ovens. So, you've got a family of ten to cook for? How many people are using the stove at once? Can you really work with a 30" wide stove or are you considering something wider? AFAIK, Frigidaire is the only North American stove maker who still makes a 40" wide gas stove. Sold under its own brand as well as Kenmore, it can be had as all gas or dual fuel. Otherwise, you will be looking at pro-style stoves in widths of 36", 48" and 60". For the pro-style all-gas rangea, the most basic are the NXR 30" and 36" stoves ($2k and $3k repsectively at Costco.com). After that, you are looking at about a $500 jump to the next tier of pro-style stoves, which will be Italian imports like Bertazzone and Verona. (And, if you are in Canada, Costco Canada sells a bsic Blue Star for $2400.) Another roughly $1000 jump takes you to dealer prices for Blue Stars, American Range and Viking's D3 line as well as Kenmore's and Kitchenaid's pro-style stoves. Spend another $500 to $1000 and you are looking at Wolf ($4k) and Thermador ($4.2k) and GE Monogram (?) all-gas stoves. It goes up from there. Viking gets slammed here because it has had quality control and warranty service issues and has had proprietary parts which get discontinued. There are long threads here on this topic. There are long threads on each of the other brands, as well. Each of these stoves has its following here at GW and each has been very thoroughly dissected, except for American Range, which is new to the residential market. If you want more detailed help, you could be more specific about your remodeling budget as well as about how you cook and what you cook (and how many of you need to work the stove at a time.) For example, if you regularly use three or four large pots (say, 12" diameter ones), a pro-style range my look pretty attractive. OTOH, if you are mainly cooking with one or two large pans at a time, but you do a lot of baking, then maybe you want to look at a standard range like the Frigiaire FPGF3081KF, a gas range which has third-element "true" convection in a 5 cu- ft. oven (for about $1300, but probably less expensive this holiday season.) With regard to design, I think cj47 has given you a good suggestion for also checking out the Kitchens forum..

So how did it turn out? We are building as well and I hated all the plans out there some more then others. They were either lacking, or had qualities that I have in our current home. If you are still trying to figure out the master set up I can sure send you what we chose for our set up. Then bathroom is smaller but doesn't lack in function, also we have our master in that same corner and we have a narrow window above where our bed will be way up high and went with narrow windows on each side of our bed. I also recommend that you go to a lot of open houses that have walls in the foyer when you walk in, look at different designs and layouts, see what you like and don't like. On paper vs visualizing in your head is so much more inadequate then actually looking at a home with super small bedrooms, or obscure walls. Your plan may work for you in your head but if you can actually walk into a home that the foyer is blocked with wall 5' in front of the entrance you may rethink where you put your stairs. I saw a few different options where you could sneak in the stairs with a little bit of tweaking to your floor plans. Also, we took a floor plan apart and it is part of 2 different plans plus my own tweaking. We went to our local small town home building lumber yard and they have ppl there that draw this stuff up for a living, I asked how much my plans were and they didn't charge me as our contract buys his inventory there. and find yourself a craftman contractor, one that is great at what he does, small time not a big company builder that turns out tons of houses in a yr. Ours does one per yr, he delivers quality, integrity and he doesn't bat an eye when you want to change things a bit on the interior. He built my in laws massive addition and I watched the man work, he was awesome! Find someone who will work with you look at your finished plans and tell you that wont work or maybe another way to look at it. Build your house the way you want to but first, go look at some open houses that are similar or have some of the same things you have in your plans. Best of luck! I feel your pain of finding the right plan, late nights, research, consumed by what you need and want. When your house plans feels right and you have come to where you are confident with them you will know it is right.

Amy, Tim and I were joking that the single red branch might be turning red because it is dying. I don't think we're right about that, but I have pondered why only one branch has leaves that have changed color. I do see quite a bit of red poison ivy in the trees along fence lines when I walk the dogs. I don't care if it is poison ivy (not our property, not our problem), I love seeing the red foliage. Seriously, though, on trees whose leaves turn red, those trees need the specific combination of cool nights and bright sunny days to make red leaves, and some years we don't get that combination so we don't get much red foliage. When one branch or one part of a tree turns red and the rest doesn't, scientists believe that the part turning red first just happens to have the perfect microclimate. I am not sure I buy that explanation. Why one limb on a tree that's 30' or 40' tall? Why not 2 or 3 limbs or 6 or 10? (sigh) Mother Nature has many mysteries we really do not understand. Today we went to the CostCo in Southlake, TX, because I wanted to go to Central Market just up the road a bit after that. I'd forgotten how gorgeous that specific CostCo's landscaping is. You can tell their landscape architect must have specified trees that have good autumn color because most of the trees planted in the parking lot medians have great autumn color already---mostly Chinese pistache is what is red there right now, but also some sort of cypress trees, sweetgum and maybe some Shumard red oaks (that aren't red yet) along the perimeter. I was looking at the pistache trees today and loving their foliage and red berries. Why haven't I planted Chinese pistache here? I'm going to plant 2 or 3 next spring. Amy, I still have a lot of Red Creoles that haven't sprouted yet. Also, Copra, Highlander and Red River. Those are the Dixondale varieties that store the longest for me. That's how I get in trouble, by the way, with planting too many---picking all those long keeping varieties means I have a lot to plant in order to have a lot to store---and then we have more than we can eat fresh even after I've made tons of salsa and chopped/frozen tons more. I need to have more discipline and pick just one long keeping type each year instead of several. I think Nelson is getting scarce because a lot of places sold out of it in 2017. I think Jung still had it the last time I was looking at seeds on their webpage. Who knows if the sellers that sold out in 2017 will have it again for 2018. It could be that there was a crop failure at the seed production level since many of the USA retailers all buy their seed through the same big wholesalers, who in turn buy their seed from overseas producers. Nancy, George (MacMex) lives near Tahlequah and he posted a photo on his FB page of a cabbage covered in frost (cabbage is fine) this morning and said the low there was 25 degrees, so he must have gotten some of your cold if your garden escaped relatively undamaged. Maybe the cold didn't make it quite to your place last night. We're supposed to be about 5 degrees warmer tonight that we were last night. We'll see. Rebecca, My garden is toast. It is okay, but I will miss the Lima beans our big lush plants would have been producing for about another month. I thought about covering them up, but the trellis is 6' tall and about 25' long and I didn't want to wrestle with getting row cover over that trellis and weighed down along the egdes in yesterday's wind. I hope giving your back some extra rest today is helping it, and the fact that OSU won couldn't hurt any. We had the game on the radio while we were out running errands and doing grocery shopping. You're like me. No matter how many seeds and containers you have, you always need more. It is a peculiar affliction we gardeners have, of always "needing" more. lol. I'll tell you what makes me feel old---my nephew has a 14 year old stepdaughter!!!! Yikes. I am not sure how that happened. I believe her mom was very young when she had her, but still......it seems like the nieces and nephews themselves were graduating from high school just a few years ago (been more than a decade though, even for the youngest one) and now one of them has a stepdaughter in high school this year. That sort of freaks me out. However, the rest of my nieces and nephews' kids range from newborn to about 10 years old, so they're all ages. Still, I do feel old age creeping up on me. Jacob, That pepper plant really is a champ, or is in a perfect microclimate. I miss the green already. Everything here has gone the color of wheat except for the tree foliage. I cannot believe the difference in how everything looks now compared to just a few days ago. Rebecca, There you go, you enabler you! Go, girl, go! If you and I are going to have far too many seeds (and you know that we do, and probably Amy too), then everyone else needs to have far too many seeds as well. Perversely, not that my garden is frozen, I want to plant something. I probably won't though. Maybe I'll sow some lettuce seeds indoors. It was nice today to walk wherever I wanted and to not have to watch out for snakes beneath my feet. If we have any days that go back up into the 70s/80s, I will have to watch. They don't necessarily go down for the count after the first freeze, and will continue to be out now and then either hunting for food or capturing heat by lying on concrete until we get good and cold and stay there. I'm watching TCU play Iowa State right now, and TCU has not had the lead yet in this game. I'm wondering if ISU is going to pull off another upset and beat the #4 team in the country. It could happen. I hope it doesn't. Dawn

My son and his wife purchased their first home and wanted to buy a large dining set for their open area near the kitchen, as they love to entertain. Given they were wanting to start a family, everyone suggested waiting to see how their space would be utilized. Ended up doing the opposite to your plans, as they wanted to interact as a family in one accessible space and large dining space was less of a priority. If your children are young, personally I’d leave, so you can keep your eye on them, interact, etc. Nice to be in kitchen and interact with family and friends, other than during meals. Also consider you have the option of dining outside a lot. Suggest weighing the pros and cons of both. Also, if it‘s not a big deal to switch, test it out and live with it for a bit. Would there be an option for improvement to your kitchen‘s dining? If you do update kitchen seating, consider painting panelling.