Unless your house has too much insulation for your climate it is always best to oversize your stove. Remember you can always build a small fire in a bigger stove but not the other way around. The only manufacturer I would avoid is Vermont Castings. Hopefully you already have a cache of fully seasoned firewood. If not the performance of the stove will be disappointing.

Two important measurements are CFMs (cubic feet/minute of air movement) and sones (noise level). I've read that anything over 400cfm needs MUA (make-up air), so that gas flames in furnaces, HW heaters, etc., (and loose papers, pets, and small children ;) are not sucked toward the hood. The higher the BTUs (with gas), the more CFMs are needed. Electric, and possibly induction, can get by with fewer CFMs Also, a good rule of thumb is to make the hood 6" wider than the range top, to increase the capture area for HOGS (heat, odors, grease, and steam). Here are a couple of pages of threads addressing the issue: Threads is Kitchen Forum Threads in Appliances Forum You can also cross-post the question in the Appliances forum. Good Luck!

I agree Melinda... I really preferred the feel and look and sound of laminate over vinyl. Having said that, if it was for an investment property I may have picked vinyl as I do think you have to be wary of water spilling on laminate. Mind you, our old cheap laminate (the one we just replaced) had it’s fair share of spills, and survived a few years of my super wet mopping just fine. I’m just more cautious with these new floors as we want them to last.

Here is the finished product. You all were very helpful as I began my dive into this project. Very good points for safety were made, and I took them all into consideration. As I continued my search for information I landed at Hearth dot com and got a lot of help with the detailing of this stove install. Some of you may have been to that site. They were great! DH and I started looking at stoves in February, right before Corona virus took off. Early March I had purchased a stove on sale because of the new EPA 2020 standards that were coming out. I got a Jotul 45, 1st version. They have since come out with version 2. Someone on Hearth dot com lived in my locale and told me about another stove for sale, so I took a look. Then my eye traveled around the corner and I spotted the Jotul. The one I was looking at was an Osborn and I think a little larger than we were considering, but I allmost bought it, until I saw the Jotul 45 around the corner. Then I realized the size was perfect for our basement stairway. It was about the size of a European washer, that I have in the basement. I am so glad I didn't get the Osborn, as I don't know if we could have made the stairway turn to get into the basement. I picked the stove up early March, wary of the contact with others. We had lined up a chimney sweep to install flexible insulated double walled stainless steel lining and insulated rigid chimney pipe up top, at the top of the brick chimney and out the roof. I think the whole run is 14' (edited to add, I think the run is closer to 20' now that I think about it). I have insulated stove pipe going from the stove to the brick chimney with liner. I have the stove sitting on a repurposed slab of soapstone, so that when the basement floor gets damp or water, it is above the wet and won't get rusty feet. The water is an issue about 2x/year due to old clay block foundation. We bought some 2-3 year old seasoned wood for this winter, and have cut one locust, and 2 ash trees down for the future. I love using our friends wood splitter. old unsafe chimney that only went 1/2 down the brick chase: New scheme: the "new Jack" was not put in: show room floor, my new Jotul 45 (1st version) I'll post more...as I have been having trouble getting more than 4 pics to load.