I have all 3 of these and they are not at all similar. Helianthus 'lemon queen' gets huge, blooms for a month or 2, and has pretty light yellow flowers. Also spreads like crazy by rhizomes. Helenium mardi gras has a marble of color, but predominantly orange in the blooms, and has the prominent helenium cone in the middle. These are both beautiful plants, but this year they aborted most of their blooms in the drought (we had watering restrictions, and my gardens are just too large to water everything well). Heliopsis summer sun is blooming machine! Very long bloom season and cheery medium yellow semi-double blooms. Although it did get a bit more water than the other two because of where it's growing, Heliopsis helianthoides is much more drought tolerant than Helenium autumnale, which is more of a wetland species.

Technically an electric heater model delivers a "dry" heat versus a gas or propane heated model. The reason is the combustion process of a natural gas or propane model gives off H2O (water) as a byproduct, the thing you are trying to evaporate from the clothes load, and has a discernible difference on drying time required ( like 2 to 3 percent, literally seconds over the length of a drying cycle). That said, with the crash of natural gas prices due to the huge supplies now being tapped in North Dakota and Canada, natural gas is almost always the best for overall operating costs. It's hard to tell if this will be a long term trend or not, as big power plants are switching over to natural gas, replacing coal fired plants and causing the realy retirement of several nuclear plants. With rising demand, price is sure to follow eventually. Reliability has always been slightly in favor of electric, there are just more parts to go wrong (igniters, flame sensors, contaminants in gas, pressure changes, etc). Overall, the gas firing technology is as good as its ever been. It should be better than a 20 year old machine. Steve

I think it can look very nice. I don't think the asymmetry will be an issue - the island already adds asymmetry since you have an island overhang on one side. I don't have a U kitchen (more of a wide galley kitchen) but we have 31" recess on one side and 24" on the other. We have a peninsula on one one side, so it's not that comparable -- but we don't notice the difference at all. Here's a picture (from Houzz) of a frame built around a full-depth refrigerator. [Traditional Kitchen[(https://www.houzz.com/photos/traditional-kitchen-ideas-phbr1-bp~t_709~s_2107) by San Jose Design-Build Firms May Construction, Inc. A couple suggestions: 1) It helps to be a bit more specific on dimensions. The picture above is like our kitchen in that the countertop depth matches the depth of the side panel. With the overhang, your lower cabinets will probably go out 1.5" less than that countertop depth. The point being -- base the dimensions on the countertop depth in this case, not on the cabinets. 2) I have a Samsung and they require 2" clearance behind the refrigerator for proper ventilation. There are a lot of reports of their refrigerators not cooling correctly when you use less clearance. Other vendors have a smaller requirement but you have to go off the vendor recommendation and not an industry standard. The 2" clearance requirement was the reason I went down to the Samsung RF263BEAESR/AA, which is slightly smaller depth. This post was edited by calumin on Sat, Oct 5, 13 at 18:09

I met with the other, smaller company Friday. I was there for 3 hours. I really want to work with them - they really took time to understand the project and what's important to me. I don't think I want to go with Marsh though. I have the door sample along with the door sample from Norcraft and the Marsh door edges don't seem as crisp. They carry Cabico, she thinks it will likely be out of my budget (but to go with a better cabinet, I would be willing to go up a bit), but is going to price it. The company I want to work with carries Marsh, Medallion, Cabico, Holiday, Rosewood, and Design Craft. If we can't find something that works without going crazy on the budget, then I can hold my nose and call the other company. But I really don't want to do that. I've been trying to talk my husband into Barker! He's not enthused or motivated to do RTA. With the whole house disassembled in the construction process, we really wouldn't have a place to store and assemble.