The burners on the DCS cooktop are like the burners on the DCS range and they're great. I've had a DCS range for over 5 years and love the burners - the simmer is especially good. I think you'll be happy with the DCS.

I like a mix I saw a walk-in closet first time in my life when I first came to the States. I thought it's kinda neat)) When my late Grandma did her first and last remodel, in the eighties, she "borrowed" space between two rooms (we had three altogether, and it didn't go by bedrooms like here)-and that's how we had two big, not walk in but still quite big closets. That was neat too. It was a nicely sized apartment but we were six people there. Everything was very organized..had to be. But we had lots of free standing pieces..say my and my brother's clothes all except for coats went in a small wardrobe, and the wardrobe wasn't in our room, but in a different, bigger room, where Grandma and Grandpa slept. Books, we had in every room. We have a lots of books now too-but to be honest, it's but a small percentage of what we used to have when I was a little girl. One can't compare. In short, I still find the concept of built in closet pretty neat)) But I love free standing pieces too, a lot. I think the right mix gives one function, form, flexibility and beauty. So I go by that. Except for the garage..that's my DH's kingdom..and he abhores the thought of ruling there too..:) but doesn't want anybody's help as much as I beg. He thinks closets help, shelves help, this or that surface will help..no, nothing will help..I will help if you let me:) The concept is important, but it can't be fully functionable and enjoyable without people handling it, you know.

It is worth pointing out, I think, that the pressure differential across the blower, called pressure loss, is essentially the same whether the blower is in the hood, at the end of the duct outside, or in a door blowing into an otherwise sealed house. The pressure loss is the sum of all the losses due to friction and turbulence in the duct, duct cap where present, hood transitions, baffles, make-up air system restrictions, etc. Any slight differences in pressure loss with blower position will be due to local transitions where the blower is mounted versus the blower's air flow uniformity at the blower exit. The resulting flow rate will be that which applies to that pressure loss on the fan curve plot. Front of hood deposited grease is due to insufficient overlap and/or insufficient air velocity at the hood aperture. Hoods are generally poor at drawing air from the vicinity of the burners. Most plume capture depends on the plume's upward velocity, mainly driven by the buoyancy of hot grease and water vapor and air. The plume naturally expands as it rises, hence hood aperture overlap is desirable.

@mama goose_gw zn6OH, thank you very much for the additional information! Thankfully my husband works for an HVAC (and plumbing/electrical) company so he will be in charge of the hood. We haven't gotten that far in the planning process but it'll be good to know to plan for it to overhang by 6". On the oven note, I'm really unsure how that will play out. I like the idea of having a range where everything is all together in my work zone. It just depends on what we can find that suits our needs and budget. If it ends up as a range, we can still plan on the microwave being there in some kind of cabinet configuration. @3onthetree, you've raised some excellent questions. The start of the new stairs will be inside the new addition. The middle section will go over what is currently just an open niche in our bedroom (which we will enclose as a small storage closet). A few of the stairs will locate in what is currently some built-in storage over the basement stairs, accessed from the storage niche in our bedroom. The location of the starting point of the stairs will be a balancing act between keeping enough head height where the support beam will run across the stairs and the distance the stairs extend out into the usable attic floor space. We need to maintain head clearance under the beam but we also want to maintain as much usable attic floor space as possible so we have as much floor space to work with as possible. We do plan to eventually put in a bedroom and a bathroom in the attic; we have consulted the IRC 2018 (which is what our local jurisdiction requires) to ensure that we're meeting the required minimum room areas and ceiling heights. As for the roof - I need to preface this with the fact that I'm not an architect - but this is the roof design that I've come up with so far. I'm going to pick my boss's brain (she's a licensed architect) to see if she thinks there are any better ways to design this. But it's what I've got so far as a starting point. Exterior modeling is not my forte so again, this is rudimentary. I would like to design some kind of "eyebrow" over the exterior door that will shelter from rain, even if slightly. Just haven't gotten that far yet. And yes, we're expecting we will need a laminated beam to run across where the exterior wall will be removed. We will be hiring a structural engineer to assist with analyzing everything and also to help determine what we need to do for our attic floor joists. We know that we will need to sister in bigger boards to beef everything up to support the finished space - just need to find out what will actually be required. To your earlier point (the stair design), once we've got an engineer on board and determine the size, height, and location of the structural beam, I can nail down exactly where the stairs should start. In regards to circulation, what is really funny is that you sketched in an opening exactly where one used to be in the original design of our home! Before we purchased our home, it was remodeled by a contractor who walled in an existing doorway into that hallway in order to make the kitchen more functional. I can't imagine just how tiny that original kitchen must have been with another doorway there! But, back to your point, with the size of our house, I really don't want to sacrifice usable space for additional circulation. I go on walks daily with the purpose to get extra steps in my life. A few in my house isn't going to hurt anything and those with far larger homes walk many more steps than we will. Not an issue for us but I really appreciate you steering me to think about the design from different perspectives! In regards to sizing things proportionately to the home, we have had LOTS of these kinds of discussions over the years. "Cozy" is a nice way to describe our house :) When first putting pen to paper, I was actually looking at a smaller addition. And then the contractor we spoke with said we might as well go a little bit bigger because there are so many costs associated with just getting people on the job that a few more feet in this size of addition/remodel won't make a huge cost difference, beyond just paying for the normal SF costs. Also, while I don't feel the need to deep dive into all of the personal aspects of our decision-making on here, we did spend a few years of our lives mulling over whether we wanted to stay in our home or get into a bigger, more expensive house. We "shopped" a lot during that timeframe. And, we ultimately decided to stay in our smaller home for a variety of reasons. Our personal attitude is a bit of a "YOLO" approach to our home; we have decided to make it the way we want it as we're planning to stay here for years. We feel like it's the right decision for us. So unless the bids come in astronomically high and just don't make sense, we're going to proceed with the project. A bonus for us is the fact that my husband is very experienced in MEP (and licensed on the HVAC side of it) so he can take care of a chunk of some of the expensive components of this kind of project himself, which will help bring down our project costs. What he can't complete, we will hire out through his employer, which will be at a discounted rate. So, that's how we ended up where we're at, in a nutshell. I really appreciate you asking questions that help us think through different aspects of our project. Thank you very much!