GGG, Feel free to either email me on the website or call the office, I will be happy to go over your experience and do my best to correct any issues you may have, I am not sure what you initially ordered and why the shipping was an issue, but some items that we carry will be shipped later than others, usually muscadines, blueberries, and blackberries are shipped relatively early and fruit trees and other are usually late Dec/early to mid Jan, depending on how cold the fall was and how quickly stock goes dormant, we do not strip leaves off or do anything to stock prematurely to make it go dormant in order to ship sooner, we find we are putting unwanted stress on the trees. As far as commenting on GWD, I feel it is better to either call or email the customer personally and handle it in house, if the customer chooses to change his or her rating after a negative comment that is that customers choice, but in the past some customers have changed their rating based on our effort to please the customer as best we can. Any customer that has felt slighted or mistreated can call me anytime, and I will make every effort to correct the situation. Thx Greg Ison

Xedos - I like the ovens you picked, but I did not need a double oven as I got the stove, but that is what we were getting. Someone recommended a high end oven, I saw no point in spending that money as a "regular big box store oven" would do just fine. I am not a fan of cooktops... just never cared for them. I had one and it broke and was massively expensive to repair.. could have almost bought a brand new one. I want a griddle I can clean but do not have to store or take up counter space. Now, I even looked at cooktops vs the stove and looked at putting in a double oven instead.. would have gone that way, but the dang cooktops I saw that did what this stove did were the same amount. I like open burners. I like a built in griddle, not one with a hot plate you can set on top of the burners.. i.e. pull it out put it away. I liked the reviews/examples of the heat distribution of the Capital. Those were the deciding factor of this stove, to be honest. There were stoves a little less expensive than the CC, but they did not perform the same, from what I saw. Show me an alternative to the 48" CC that meets or exceeds it usage/abilities. Don't just tell me I am getting it because I like to show off. I work my stoves to death. Last thanksgiving.. I cooked so much I had to take my propane smoker on the back porch and box off the openings to get it up to 350 degrees so I could bake my green bean casserole in it and my sweet potato casserole. R

Don't pick appliances because they're all from the same manufacturer! None of them do EVERYTHING equally well, IMHO. And re: Consumer Reports - be careful. Read the USER reviews too. Quite often, it seems the CR reviewers and the actual users are on two different planets - things CR rates highly get 1 or 2 stars from the users - repeatedly. This is not an isolated thing. Read as many reviews as you can all over the net, then go look at stuff. And if all that has died is the microwave and everything else is working fine, just replace the microwave. Microwaves aren't really considered repairable items these days and some of them barely make it to the end of the warranty. What you want is a microwave that performs well and meets YOUR needs. What do you want your microwave to do? How big, how much power, what settings, what interface - which can get really annoying if it's not to your liking! A few years ago, some idiot decided that microwaves with knobs for setting time (really???) instead of touch screen buttons were the way to go - and voila, practically all of them did that (what is this - 1975 all over again?) Thank goodness that bit of idiocy seems to be fading - but the point is, there are fads in appliance design too and you never know when one appliance is going to go toes up on you. The microwave is the least expensive item, and the one most likely to have to be replaced long before any other appliance. For that reason, I would never build a microwave in - if it dies and the line is no longer made, then what? Your cabinet may not be the right size for whatever you want to get next. Our microwave lives on an open shelf above the wall oven for this reason. Buy things based on your needs and wishes - not the wish of the store to sell you a whole bunch of appliances you weren't even considering before walking in. BTW - Kitchenaid calls some of their fridges "cabinet depth" and they are 30" deep. A counter depth fridge in my books shouldn't be much deeper than your cabinets - and most kitchen cabinets are 25" deep.

Expanding on what emho23 and jhmarie said, it is helpful to bear in mind that there's a difference between "the best possible," "optimum" and just "okay" (a/k/a what emho called "fine" or what I have called "acceptable compromises for the budget, design and circumstances.") Emho mentions wrestling with the issues. Many of us have wrestled with the resolving of choices of appliance compromises. At some point, we all wind up spinning and thinking "why is this so hard?" And if you think choosing a hood is hard, wait til you get to choosing a washing machine! LOL. So, let's try sorting through your preferences to see if we can make this a little easier for you to figure out. First, let's clarify what you meant when you said you "didn't realize all the $300-1000 ones in the big box stores were all recirculating or weren't a complete package." Are you thinking most are recirculating because the product tagline descriptions on the big box store websites rarely say a hood is "ducted?" The key here may be in knowing that almost all hoods at the big box stores will vent to the exterior by default but can be switched over to ductless. IME, the tagline descriptions in the product listings that say "ducted" or "ductless" are used only for the models that can't be switched from one mode to the other. If the tagline doesn't say one of the other, the hood is one you can vent to the exterior. Does this clarification maybe open up a wider range of choices for you? Second, you say you want a focal point hood on a wall between two windows. So, I'm thinking, maybe what you have in mind is a wall space without cabinets where you are looking for a pyramidal-shaped, wall mounted, canopy style of hood with a kind of chimney rising from the top of the hood. A hood with a canopy is a good thing because the canopy (as opposed to a flat base) is big assist in capturing the rising plumes of steam, heat and vaporized cooking effluents. A flat base can be acceptable if you have to do that route (as I did) but a canopy is better. With a good canopy, there is less concern with large numbers in the fan CFM ratings. As Kaseki has often explained here before (in excellent technical detail for those who want it), capture area is as important to hood efficiency as the fan power, and often more so. That likely gives you a much wider array of choices of hoods. Third, emho mentioned getting a 36" wide hood for the Jenn Air version of your Kitchenaid range. That reflects a standard recommendation here. The extra width enhances the hood's ability to capture cooking effluents (steam, aerosolized grease, etc.) which rise in an expanding cone. That brings us to the compromise in most less expensive hoods. Many are only 19" or 20" deep, front to back. Put a big pot of pasta water to boil on a big front burner on your stove and maybe some steam gets by the front of the hood. Neither the best nor the optimum design, but maybe okay for everyday living and cooking? Fourth, your builder's reluctance to install a vented hood in your kitchen might be understandable if the new house will be very tight, as many newly built homes may be. In that case, adding an unplanned-for hood may pose regulatory and practical problems. If your jurisdiction has adopted International Residential Code Section M1503.4 and/or International Mechanical Code Section 505.2, you might be able to avoid regulatory issues by simply choosing a hood with fans rated at 400 CFM or less But, there is still basic physics to deal with when the new house will be very tight. While you might avoid those kind of regulatory issues by choosing a hood rated at 400 CFM or less, and/or putting it in yourselves as DIY project, you've still got to look at the practical concerns. The biggest practical concern is one of safety. This concern arises when there are fireplaces or gas appliances from which CO can be backdrafted regardless of whether your range hood is rated below 400 CFM. You might avoid the CO backdrafting concerns if there are no fireplaces or wood-burning stoves and if the heating appliances have their own powered air intakes and exhausts sealed off from the rest of the house. However, a tight house still poses a practical physics problem akin to sucking air out of a closed box. (For that matter, I've seen a house so tight that the even bathroom fans didn't work well.) Where things can get really complicated (and therefore) expensive is when you have sought something like a LEED certification, or your builder is trying to meet the performance-based standards of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (e.g., ASHRAE ¶ 62.2), or the house is built in a state with it's own performance-based interior air quality standards such as those that Minnesota, Wisconsin and California have adopted. That means expenses for measurements and testing and maybe MUA expenses before adding an unplanned range hood to the design. OTOH, the builder may just be looking for a way to avoid dealing with the problem so as to move on to the next project. Or, maybe, all of the above.