I know where you are coming from. I saw the ad for the Fein and thought the tool was amazing, but I wasn't going to spend several hundred dollars for it. Until one day my wife told me that Menard's just started to carry the Rockwell Sonic Crafter. I bought the 20 piece set for $120 and I have loved this tool ever since. I have used it for almost every aspect of our bathroom remodel, from cutting drywall, wood, and cement board, to trimming old nails and copper plumbing, to making nitches for the shower. I can't speak for the Dremmel model, but the Rockwell is awesome. The only part that I wish they would refine in instead of a pressure lock system like on the Fein, the SonicCrafter uses and allen head screw that can work itself free from time to time. So you will need to keep tightening it. Menard's also carries most of the replacement accessories for the Rockwell. All in all I have been very happy with it and will use this thing until it dies.

Looking at your full floor-plan, I just realized that my LR is similar to yours, a continuous "L" with the Living Room flowing into the Breakfast Room (your DR), Fireplace in the same place. My current kitchen is a galley where your kitchen table is, connecting to my DR on the other side of the house (your sink area / front yard). My entry is where your hallway is, and a staircase splits my house in half where your pantry is, with a hallway where your entry is. My front yard is where your bedrooms are. My current kitchen is very small - a 8'x11.5' long galley, but only 8 ft of the length has walls for cabs and appliances, because the back door and basement door are at the other end. Honestly, before we added on (don't even get me started on the NIGHTMARE that turned into), I had tried every conceivable new layout for my original kitchen. Your kitchen is a DREAM in comparison - and twice the size! One of my ideas was to knock a doorway into that corner of my living room (where yours is). From a "foot feel" it made sense - enter from the entry or hallway, hook a right past the staircase and Boom, you're in the kitchen! Sounds great. But wait! Where will my sofa go? In front of the front windows? (where your bedroom wall is). Been there, done that, feels like a corridor. Floating in the middle of the room in front of the fireplace? Well, perhaps if it wasn't 8 ft long and wouldn't block access to the breakfast room. Can't go along the side of the staircase - it would block the new kitchen entry! (same with the back wall of your pantry - with a doorway in that corner the entire corner becomes dead space.) In otherwords, putting a doorway in any part of that corner severely limited the function of the living room. And honestly, I've been in some cute old houses that have been "modernized" to get a bigger kitchen and what they ended up with in the front of the house was an awkward space with a big fireplace with small furniture that looked "cute" but was absolutely useless for real life. Because of the way your entry hall is located you have no wall across from the fireplace to put furniture on either - your only option will be along the bedroom wall and floating in the middle of the room. If you ever go to sell your house, that would scare a lot of buyers away (you never know their styles and tastes and kind / size of furniture they have). This is just my observation / opinion, but your house is small, and giving up functional living areas to get a better kitchen is not the ideal. Nevermind that a doorway in that corner chops the kitchen itself into two parts. No house is perfect (unless you have Oodles of money), and walking through the living room and the front end of the dining room to enter via a large opening into the kitchen seems to give you the best of both worlds - a better, more functional kitchen, a functional LR, a better view from the entry (no staring at that pantry when you walk in), should not interfere with your dining room table, allows communication with diners while you are in the kitchen, and your more casual family room is still located off the kitchen as it is now. And honestly, my house is probably twice the size of yours (post-addition), and that is STILL the exact same traffic route we use today to get to the back of the house - through the living room, right into Breakfast Room, right into galley (will-be Butler's pantry / hallway), left into new kitchen / family room. And my house is a giant circle with the staircase splitting it in half - we could use the hallway on the other side to get to the DR / back (new kitchen), but we never do. Probably because the front door is on the side of the house and when you enter there is a wall in front of you (bedroom behind), so you must turn left and face staircase, then I guess the LR feels more welcoming than the narrow hallway to the right. My Breakfast Room is 8'x10' ft and it has a 48" round table with 4 chairs in the center. We enter the kitchen via the space between the table and the wall, have never had a problem in all these years. And that doorway is only 32" wide. THAT is one thing I HATE about my original house - same as yours - SMALL doorways in Corners! UGGH! The wall between our old dining room and new kitchen has been totally opened up with an LVL header - that is for a table that seats 8-10 - opening up the wall allows a MUCH BIGGER table in the DR because you can walk in / on the space where an annoying wall used to be. So the end chair doesn't get stopped by a wall. You do not need an LVL - that is only for spans greater than 10 ft. The old back door I headered-out myself so the new opening will be 40" wide (48" header) once I remove the old cabinets and plaster walls from the old kitchen side. I had to work with electric wires, so I used 2x6's with blocking above and the wires go between the header and top-plate. For a 5 ft. opening (I did this upstairs - a 6-footer), use double 2x10's or 2x12's (try to match the drop of existing doorways) with plywood sandwiched between (to match thickness to 2x4 support studs). Two studs beneath header on each end. If you and your husband cannot DIY the wall blow-out, and you are going to hire someone to do it, then get your money's worth and blow out the entire 8 foot wall between the kitchen and dining room. You are paying for labor - the additional cost in materials here is pennies. Use double 2x12's with plywood between - you really don't need an LVL here (the old 12 ft. header between DR and Den in our house was 2x12's - it was only replaced with a steel LVL because we added a second floor above it). The header will be 8 ft. long (or just shy - leave the corner stud where the LR wall meets DR wall). Install 3 studs below header on each end - technically two each should be fine, but 3 is a lot stronger and gives the great added benefit of using full-size trim to wrap the studs into the corners. The actual opening will then be just over 7 feet wide. Then, put in a 48" high pony wall, 30" wide, next to LR/DR corner so that you can have a 42" high counter running the length of the living room wall in the kitchen. Then when sitting at the counter you can see right into the DR, and you still have a wide 4.5-5 ft opening to walk through between DR and kitchen. Again, that's what I would do. Minimal demo, lots of new counterspace and storage.

I have a Roto-zip ($150) and a Fein Multi-tool ($400 -but there are cheaper ones out there). This is what I've found from spending the last 7 years doing a complete gut and remodel (rebuild mostly) of a 130 year old farm house. For what you want. - cutting a square hole out of hardwood floor for an air duct (although nails that aren't visible through the tongue & groove could make this tricky) Fien tool - the rotozip struggled cutting through hardwood - lots of burning and went very slow - actually I don't think either it a great tool for this job- a good quality jigsaw would be better. - cutting sheet metal ducts and gutter downspouts I have not done a lot of metal cutting with either - but I think the oscelating blade would be better. We've done most of that with a metal blade on the compound miter saw -larger projects get cut with a blade backwards in a skill saw - or by hand - bought a nibbler but did not like the way it works (this was for work on outbuildings). - cutting notches out of tile for backsplash going around back of sink I found the rotozip worked wonderful for this (need the right bit) - put your tile on a piece of scrap sheetrock so you can keep the whole tile supported (just cut into the sheetrock). Was worth the full purchase price even if I never use it for anything else. - small routing jobs (hinge mortises) I would not use the rotozip - it is harder to control than the Fien tool and you really don't want to slip doing this work. For these things DH uses a good wood chisel. Bigger routing jobs get done with the router. - cutting holes in drywall Rotozip made way too much dust - best here is a hand saw of some sort. Utility knife and a steady hand does not make near the mess. For small cuts (like outlets) an exacto knife with a 3" serrated blade was our favorite, but we have not found blades like that again. It was pointed enough you could push the blade through the sheetrock and then start cutting. - detail sanding Unless you have holes and need a drum type, the oscelating tool wins hands down. However I've got several nice sanders and they work better than the Fien tool for the job. I also have drum sanders for my drill press so I've not had to use the rotozip to sand anything - - cutting existing trim and baseboard shorter to install a cabinet Fien tool hands down. Main reason we bought it. There have been so many times in our whole house remodel that the oscelating tool has turned out to be the ONLY tool suitable for the job. BTW - I second what others have said - dremel is great for the hobbiest (woodworking, arts & crafts) but I've never considered it for construction type house work. I owned one years ago but gave it away at some point. Cathy

Thank-you! I've been chafing at the imperfections in my ability to read Spanish (it used to be much better)--especially considering your English is impeccable-- but I like your way of looking at it better. It's the scanning in Spanish that I just can't do, though. Never could. Where you look at a whole paragraph and know what it's about, and your eye picks out the word or two about what you're looking for. I actually have to read all the words in Spanish. :) I don't know if the power difference has any real effect on performance. The BGH "max power" may just be what's needed to run both the top heating element and the grill at the same time (which is another difference from the Franke). I don't know if those modes would help pizza, but I'd guess that's the kind of thing it was really meant for. I doubt max power is used that often by any oven. Probably in a pre-heat mode where all elements are on to make the oven heat more rapidly than just using the ones you want to cook with. But I don't know that for sure. A consideration in buying any appliance is service. Ovens sometimes need to be calibrated, or a part may fail. A Chinese oven from an established local company which services and stands by it (for instance, will replace it if the unit is a "lemon"--just no good), if they actually do that, might trump a respected European oven which is sold though by the store, but they just give you the box and expect you to deal with any issues yourself. The same goes for outside sources for service. Here, some major independent appliance stores have their own service departments and have excellent techs. There are also companies in the city that specialize in one brand, such as Gaggenau or Whirlpool, and some other independents that work on the "big box store" brands such as Samsung, LG, and Panasonic, and will do any general service and repair, but don't stock the parts, which makes for a wait. Some of the big makers also have their own techs, or have certified techs at a local independent to do warranty work. It never hurts to find out who can and will do the work both during the warranty period and after. There should be a one year warranty on either. Factory testing can't find all faults, and sometimes something comes loose or breaks in shipping. The warranty should start on the day of installation. It's important to check that, because if it starts on the date of sale, but the unit is installed months later, you lose a big chunk of warranty. If the maker is giving a big extension on the warranty without added value, that's a red flag. Miele gives an extra year of warranty if you use their installers, presumably because they were getting too many warranty calls for issues caused by poor installation. But, another company might give a five year warranty, where one or two years is the norm, because they're known to have build issues. The five year warranty says, "Don't worry. We've got you covered. Buy ours anyway and we'll fix the faults." At a certain point, analysis goes out the window. After you've figured out all the features, the service, the reviews, etc., and there aren't any deal killers with either, perhaps it's the one with the nicer dials or racks that you end up preferring, or the one that matches the fridge. If you can see them in person and touch the doors and racks and knobs, you might feel which one you like better.