barb - do you read the followups ??? 2 people have told you that it doesn't take much longer (if at all) for the condenser versions of that dryer to work than the vented one. You have stumbled upon a goldmine of info as the chances of someone haveing both models and you finding them are pretty slim and you've got 2. Now you're ignoring them or questioning their sincerity? One said your probably gonna have less dry time than your used to now. Anyway your just going to have to live with however long it takes to dry anyway if you want a condenser dryer to eliminate the humidity producing "box". Of course it's going to take longer toi dry somehing in humid Hawaii thne it will in dry Montana or airid Phoenix, but you just have to live with that. It'll apply to any dryer choice you make. Will you be able to notice teh xtra time, doubtful unless you sit and time the cycle, and then you'd obviously have plenty of time on your hands anyway, so as to make the cycle time moot anyhow! The euro's have timed dry and sensor dry. choose more dryness in sensor mode or increase the time = dry clothes. This is not new technology since a huge % of Europeans are highrise dwellers these types of units make sense for many. This design dind't just fall off the truck to dupe Americans in luxury condos. Cleaning the condensing matrix is a 15 min job tops if you use brushes. I spray mine down in the sink and it's about a 4 min. task. Unit is accesible from the front of machine, clicks in and out. Are you paying attention? The entire manual is readable at Bosch's website, why don't you give it a look. Heimert - the tube for the water on a condenser dryer drains from the dryer into the wastepipe for the washer. The OP's current setup is a bucket o/water attached to the dryer vent pipe. The water has to be there to trap lint. That whole shotin match just vents back into the condo.

Does anyone have photos of their cumaru floors? Gardenchick1, you posted photos way back in '07 of your cumaru floor. Unfortunately, the link to photobucket said that your photo had been deleted or could not be seen. Anyway, I couldn't open the photos, and I'm dying to see your floors, since I'm considering installing an engineered cumaru floor. The only sample I've seen is by Mullican, and it's lovely. But I'm worried that it will look too "stripey" and what I'm really looking for is gorgeous color floors that don't look too busy. I have lots of my art work on the walls, and I want that to be the star of the show, but I want the floors to be unique in themselves. Am I making sense? Can anyone help out there?

It has been a long while (don't think I ever posted final pics - I will in the near future .. kitchen is a mess right now... :-) ) Anyway, here are some pics of the hood I constructed from panels. The main 3 panel front is basically a cabinet door that I specified as a 3 panel door. I would have had to have someone construct the sides/box and have that painted to match by conestoga (which would have been really cost prohibitive for what I wanted). I think I achieved the 3 panel look I was going for though using panels ordered from Conestoga and cutting and constructing a box. Like I said, the front angled 36" panel (with 3 panels) was basically a door made to my specs. The sides were 3/4" plywood painted/finished to match from Conestoga (I cut these to get the angle. The front flat panel and top (under crown molding panel) were pieces of hard maple from Conestoga painted to match. The molding pieces were used to match/hide some of the edges and give it a finished look. They are light rail moldings from Conestoga I also ordered in the matching frosty white. I attached the 3 panel to the front so you can remove it (see pics) with some panel clips I ordered (see pics). The bottom of the panel rests on an angled cut of the molding and the top pops into the clips to hold it in place. Sides of panel were screwed into the adjacent cabinet and across the back by two stringer pieces of wood (bottom one was painted maple ..because it shows underneath) which is used to connect the whole box to together for stability. The other upper stringer, is a 2x4 which is used to carry the weight of the fan housing. This 2x4 stringer is lag bolted into the wall studs. The side panels of the cabinet were also screwed into this 2x4 stringer (again for stability prior to installation). Like I said, it is not ideal but passes the eye test if you don't look too closely - but I am picky (whenever you build something yourself...you are pretty critical because you notice everything). If I had the extra to spend, I probably would have had someone build it from scratch but this was my attempt to get the look while using all Conestoga sourced panels (to exactly match the Frosty White paint color and sheen). Being a medium talent DIY carpenter with limited tools, I would consider this to be an advanced difficulty job since it required pocket screws to get the panels connected in front and it was generally a PITA to measure, remeasure, connect the panels, trim etc all to get exactly 36" wide and get tight panel match lines (which I did with some tweaking). A real Carpenter would have a better time doing this and would probably turn out a bit better. Hope this helps someone.

DB is creepy. That's exactly what I implied 9 years ago when this thread started. LOL. Article from Dallas News - Nov. 2016 This is a story about a creepy business gone bad that is now trying to go good. Do you remember DirectBuy? The company used to advertise in TV commercials as a members-only savings club for every kind of household item. You'd go to their showroom for a pitch and that's where the wackiness kicked in. If you didn't bring your spouse, you couldn't come in. If, after listening to the sales job, you decided not to buy a membership package right then and there (as high as $7,000), you were banned from coming back. If you bought and then found out that you couldn't buy what you wanted and the prices were not cheaper as promised, you couldn't get a refund. Lawsuits piled up. Consumer reviews were awful. I remember trying to interview franchise owners in 2010. They wouldn't talk to me. The PR guy for DirectBuy in Indiana didn't bother to answer all my questions. Yes, indeed. DirectBuy was a truly crummy company. Then the company disappeared. The TV ads stopped. The last of the 160 franchise stores, including one in Carrollton and another in Fort Worth, closed forever, leaving high-paying members angry and confused. Where did DirectBuy go? Answer: This month, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, listing $185 million in debts to the best-known home furnishing and supply companies in the world. Sounds like the final act of an old-line company that couldn't cut it anymore, right? Turns out, it may be the beginning of a new DirectBuy. Chapter 2 I'll admit that I had to alter the course of this story. A crummy company filing bankruptcy? What's left to save? Turns out DirectBuy has quietly remade itself, as executives describe it, into an Amazon wannabe with "concierge customer service." No more 20,000-square-foot showroom stores. Everything is now online and mobile-ready. You want a certain sofa? You take a photo of it, and the new DirectBuy app recognizes the sofa and shows you their cheapest price. If it's not low enough, DB will drop even lower. Need a home decorator to come and help you? Sure. Got that, too. Live chat? Yep. The price for this service is $200 for a one-time initiation fee, and $40 a month in a one-year contract. That's thousands of dollars cheaper than the old cost that came with a three-year contract. DB also promises a refund if not happy within the first 90 days. That's a jolting change for the company's old ways, fighting to hold customers to their wacky restrictive contracts. DB claims 200,000 customers nationally. They now switch to the monthly subscription model when their contracts expire. Six years ago, my records show, DB had 10,000 customers in North Texas. Chief marketing officer Curt Hilliard says his mobile-ready company uses search tools to find the lowest price, including delivery charges. "We don't just meet the price," he promises. "We drop the price a guaranteed percentage." The bankruptcy establishes a "clean slate," says spokesman Mike Georgeff, the PR exec who was hard to pin down in the old days. Now he's pretty talkative about the future. The company expects to be acquired by its lenders who become the new owners, he says. "We can establish a clean slate for our future business and prosperity," Georgeff says. Be skeptical The company must prove itself as a reincarnated version of its old self, says Julie Baker, retired TCU professor of marketing. She checked out the older version years ago and realized the offerings were better suited for someone furnishing a house or doing a major renovation. Otherwise, initial costs to join were too steep to overcome. She told me this week that turning around a company with a bad customer service culture is very difficult. "For me, it just doesn't make sense, especially over the long term," she said. "I don't see how they can be profitable charging $40 a month. They have to make a profit on the furniture even if they say they are not. There are warning flags for me." Can the same company come back in a bigger and better way? I hope so. Remember, this is a story of a creepy business that's trying to reform. Certainly, we need more of that. Staff writer Marina Trahan Martinez contributed to this report. Check out The Watchdog on NBC5 at 11:20 a.m. Mondays, talking about matters important to you.