loves2cook- I love the test tube rack. Since it was a gift I suppose it is hard to ask her how she likes it. What a great gift! WILL you be my friend????? My only concern would be putting it down and having it roll away.

Please, Don't get Stuck on having to have your spices next to the cooktop. Mine are in two drawers in my prep area which is actually where I use the bulk of the spices. (I do keep my pepper mill, salt and olive oil in a tray on top of a counter next to the range.) Baking spices are stored in my Baking Center (on a shelf with a lazy susan), which is in an different area than everything else. I don't have upper cabinets either and the drawers work well. There are so many different ways to store spices now, that I don't think it really matters if they are in a drawer, hung on the wall or stored in a cabinet (mine used to be on a lazy susan.) It really depends on the layout of the kitchen and kind of storage is available. As long as it's convenient of course!

I have a faucet that sprays and stays: Cobra faucet. It's really great in my laundry room, which I used for dishes for nearly a year. ;) It's not so "nice" looking as some of the others. I think it would work really well wall-mounted; I have it on the deck of a laundry sink. It might help for you... Brenda, I had to look back at what I'd written when there was some implication that I was proferring any sort of marital advice!! lol and then some. While I can claim to have been acquainted with my partner going on 33 years, I know I know positively zero about marital (or any other kind of) harmony. By returning that faucet I wasn't really keeping peace or falling through on any game plan; it was just not really possible to have kept it. You kinda had to be there.... ;) Back to hosing about faucets ... I think there are a few parameters to consider and evaluate for your own personal relevant importance/priority. I'll try to list a few, others can add: (i) appearance (ii) spray presence (iii) spray style (depress and hold or stay-on) (iv) spray default (returns to spray on close or stays where you left it) (v) arc (affecting where stream starts relative to dink's edge) (vi) arm length (affects where stream hits bottom of sink, closeness to drain) (vii) pull down vs pull out (affects how your arm twists to grab moveable spray head) (viii) touch (foot pedals, finger touch - possibilities beyond needing a hand to turn faucet on/off) (ix) one/two handle (affects whether water temperature is mixed internally or by you with two separate handles). (x) mobility of spray handle (thus "pro-style", others address this as, say, the Cobra, Karbon's moveable spray arm, pullout and pulldown spray heads attached to faucet arm) I think selecting a faucet is a very, very personal priorities thing. Plus, critically, a matter of dovetailing with the sink you choose. Don't forget that. I think too often this is a source of outright mistake, as opposed to, say, personal preference. Problems arise when the faucet doesn't spray in the right place on the sink's bottom, or there isn't enough room to mount handles effectively or the spray is too high or hard or for whatever reason having to do with the sink (and there's no obvious formula for determining this), the spray bounces too much. I'm sure others will flush out these lists, the list of personal preference parameters to negotiate, as well as the list of problems-sources. The only part of this whole process I truly hated was choosing the faucet, and I'm not sure I did a good job. My Karbon Kohler gets too wet at the handle, all of the time. I suppose this is a function of how I use the sink, with dripping-wet hands. Dunno. It may be just that coupled with its appearance with the little chrome ring on the countertop you just really see the water all puddled up. It's kinda annoying. My lady lux needs to have a button depressed in a too-concerted effort; there's not a ton of room to pull it out given my sink - a mistake I suppose. Both faucets need a huge amount of water pressure before their spray stays on (not so for the cobra which stays in whatever stream style you depress; it's a mechanical switch rather than an internal one dependent on the water pressure). The cobra wouldn't have been a long enough reach for the kitchen faucets. FWIW the fauset I really really wanted was the Waterstone semi-pro. At $2500 that was just an order of magnitude more than I could stomach paying! But it had a great stream, good spring, beautiful appearance, great "hand" - really a good one if you could find it in a fire sale or something.

That is an interesting conundrum, indeed. This had never occurred to me. I just measured, and yes, you are correct. On my 30" Bluestar RNB, the per-burner area is exactly 11". So, if I want to use a pot bigger than 11" diameter, I'd have to either not use one of the adjacent burners, or I'd have to use a smaller pot on that burner. That also explains, why the range has a 5½" blank grate going through the center. It makes sure that there is no interference side-to-side. There only is interference front-to-back. Having said that, I have owned my range for many years now, and I cannot recall this ever being a problem. But then, over the last 20 years or so, I have accumulated a very carefully curated collection of steel skillets, cast iron pots, tri-ply pots, and a wok. They perfectly complement each other; but it took a long time to find exactly the combination that works for my cooking style. It's not a large number of pots, but each and every one of them has a well-defined purpose.