Yes, tyguy I was being a bit facetious with the "freak good one" comment. I'm so very pleased with my range! I understand it's usually someone having a problem or issue that posts to gain information, or just air their frustrations. Back to the OPs question... I don't have the grill, but I did cook breakfast on the griddle this morning and experimented with a surface temp thermometer: I set thermostat dial at 325, which is where I usually griddle at. Cycled off in 10 minutes, and the surface temp reading was between 289 and 331 depending on where I shot the laser. Just from experience in the last six months of use, I've known the rear part to be warmer than the front. I don't mind this, it's actually helpful to me as I can place different foods in different locations. (eggs near the front, etc.) I do realize a grill needs to be much hotter than a griddle, but my outdoor gas grill takes a good 15- 20 min to really pre heat, and my Charcoal Weber needs at least a half hour or more for coals to be ready. (I just use this time to enjoy a beer:) A pan seared rib eye on a cast iron skillet comes out darn good on the 22K burner! Or you might try your steak under the broiler, being infra red it heats up very quickly! As far as the oven goes, yes it does take a while to warm up, I'll check the pre-heat time on my next baking or roasting session...

You sound like a very capable person who wants to be involved on all levels. Why not find a local designer with whom you can collaborate on the design of your kitchen? You have already done everything but place the cabinets and their trim into a layout. If you have a simple design, without furniture legs and spacers galore, you can practically do it yourself with assistance from the cabinet shop. I did this with my first kitchen, done with simple cabinetry. The brother (family cabinetry shop) who did the measuring came to our house and he and my husband and I designed the kitchen on the spot. I had drawings of what I wanted, too. With our second kitchen, I bought a pre-existing kitchen and designed a layout that worked with the cabs I bought. My carpenter and I saw a place where we needed a spacer, and he designed a couple of cabs to fill in where we did not get needed cabs with the kitchen. But I am a spacially gifted person who has had the luck to find good people to work with. I draw everything out on graph paper and measure my spaces multiple times. I also used a cabinetry booklet from one of the big box stores to learn about sizes of "standard" cabs and see basic layouts. I would consider checking with your cabinet manufacturer about layout help before you hire a new designer. You have already done so much design work. I imagine a designer will want to give you opinions on your choices, at the very least. If you don't want that, hire someone for the layout, not for the whole "design." Go over to the Kitchens Forum and start reading. You may find so much help there that you feel confident without an all-out designer on the project. You just seem very independent, which makes me wonder if you want to work with a designer, or a simple lay-out person.

We built a 3000 sq ft (or so, can never remember if the square footage includes the garage or not) house in the mountains on a hillside lot and it took 18 months +. This will be our retirement house, so we didn't need fast, and we made that clear to all of the builders that we "interviewed". But it did take longer than planned, mostly due to unforeseen issues. We built (intentionally) right before the construction industry started going again, so subs were still available. The GC is a small one-man shop, a great guy - he's now a friend, so most work was done by him, and all of his subs. Biggest delays we experienced: turned out that the architect hadn't provided the results of the ground tests (whatever they're called), so the builder didn't know until excavation that we would need a deeper hole and more gravel etc. due to the soil composition. Very snowy winter, which which was great for skiing but caused all sorts of delays because the snow started early on one end, and took forever to melt on the other. Then a rainy summer, which we don't usually have. We just rolled with it. I will say that our GC was good at letting us know about delays generally, especially the impact that the snow was having. I agree that if you can nicely tell your GC that it makes you nervous not to get updates or status reports, maybe he'll be better at letting you know what's going on. Also, our GC isn't great with technology either, but I discovered that he was much more likely to answer my texts than my emails. So I communicated mostly by texts and phone calls (though my personal preference, due to my profession, is emails). Ask your GC what method of communication works best for him.

It's rare to have a completion date and any sort of penalty for going beyond the completion date by any substantial amounts in a residential contract. These are common in commercial contracts because every extra day a business is not in business is a loss of income. But I am not sure you want someone rushing to finish up details at the end of a project to get it done in your own house anyway. I have had quite a problem with contractors over the years. I had one who came highly recommended but the scope of the project was beyond his capabilities and he just sort of disappeared leaving some tools behind. The problem was that it was very difficult to get someone to come in and not want to take out any of the old work and start from scratch. Eventually I found someone who would take over without completely undoing all the previous work. (Which wasn't close to finished). ----- I had a well known plaster restoration person (nationally known, actually) who thought my project was too simple (not a lot of ornament) and put an apprentice on the job who made a complete mess, dropped and broke pieces of the run plaster cornices, and was just way in over her head. He came in, saw what she was doing, fired her, and abandoned all the equipment including scaffolding on site and never returned another phone call or letter again. It would have been too expensive for him to undo her work and do it over at his agreed price. Luckily I don't think he had actually been paid anything yet but a small deposit, if that. I found someone else, waited more than six months for them to be available and paid about twice as much as it would have cost if they had taken it on new. ---- I should add that I dodged one big bullet. I was awaiting an estimate from a recommended contractor and he was suddenly and completely off-the-map, phones not connected, anything. I thought he was dead. He wasn't dead, but he ended up in prison (vehicular homicide and other charges) for running over a pedestrian while smoking crack. ___ Finally, I have a contractor who does great work great work. But he suffers from depression and his domestic life is always a problem (different women involved, serially). It takes him about a year to do a bathroom. He started tiling this last one in December of 2016. It's not done yet. (so it will take Two years, in all) When you talk to him about it, he says "I know. This is entirely my fault. I would not blame you if you fired me right now". But who am I supposed to get to finish a project that's 80%or more complete in terms of his part of it? The other contractors I use (plumber, electrician, HVAC, roofers) have all been great. But they are all much more expensive than average, you wait for them to be available and other issues.