Oh I'm all concerned now too. We have a freeze watch starting Friday night. It was 80 degrees for several days last week and now this! I'm completely inexperienced and have no clue what types of plants and trees will be okay or if I should try to cover everything. I'm most concerned about my conifers and JM's. Most of my conifers are at various stages. Larix and Metasequoia are all leafed out. Most of my conifers have just started breaking bud and some others haven't popped out yet. This is my first year with so many new plantings. EEEk! Should I cover everything that has broken bud? Should I cover the ones that haven't yet too? Do I need to cover my Japanese Maples, fruit trees, barberies, flowers, anything that grows. I'm sure my freshly planted rocks will do fine. =) I guess I should be asking, is there anything that will generally be okay and doesn't need covering? Thanks for helping the total newb and hope you folks don't get to irritated with educating me. =)

A couple of suggestions. Some ranges, notably Bluestar, allow adjustment of the low setting via a screw driver adjustment accessed by removing the burner knob and inserting a very small screw driver down the gas valve stem to set the flame level. Investigate if American has a similar feature. Second buy a "flame tamer" which is a cast iron or aluminum disk that sits on top of the burner grate and spreads the simmer flame over a wider area so you don't get a lot of heat concentrated in a ring-shaped area on the bottom of the pot. Trick to using one is to put the tamer on the simmer burner and start heating a good while before you need it (10 minutes or so.) It takes a while to heat the disk up and if you wait to put it on the burner when you need to move to simmer your pot will cool down quite a bit while the disk heats up. Better to have it hot and ready to go. These will give you a much more widely dispersed heating zone that will simmer very low and will avoid burned on areas. The only downside is you have to run the burner a little higher than the lowest setting and thus use a little more gas since you are indirectly heating the pot. You can find these gadgets on line for about $10-15 as I remember. Last suggestion is to get yourself a nice new set of All-Clad cookware which dissipates heat like a champ. But the flame tamer is a little more affordable.

antss, I have reflected how I use the oven. In my experience, broiling is not to my satisfaction. If I put two things in the oven at the exactly the same time and exactly the same distance from the broiler and one cooks much slower than the other, than it is less of a broiler than the other, IMHO. Whether it was designed for it or not, they give directions for broiling meats in their instruction booklet. Basically, broiling meat in the speed oven will turn that into inedible grey goo, IMHO. sayede, If I am browning on the cooktop and finishing in the oven, ie fish or meat, I will use whichever seems easier or is not used at the time. They seem about the same. If the amount I am cooking is large, I will use the Viking. If I have to move quickly, I will use Viking since the oven is under the cooktop. Otherwise, I will use the Miele. It's a toss up to me. Roasting vegies and sliced potatoes, I tend to use the Miele. Sometimes, I cook it in the speed mode but often the time is not of essence since I am making 2 or 3 dishes at the same time to get the dinner together and I will just use the regular conv bake because I am more familiar with the way the food is cooking and there are many things that needs to happen at once and I feel that I do not have the brain power to deal with combi mode while dealing with the sauteeing meat or boiling pasta. If am baking potatoes or roasting beets to get ready for other things to follow, I will use the speed/combi mode because time is of essence. If I am cooking frozen meals (which i do not do often), I will use the combi mode. I don't make casseroles often, but I have used it and have found that it reduces the time by about 1/3 to 1/2 less. For example, 1 hour food is done in about 1/2 hour to 2/3 hour. I do find that the texture of the food does change with the combi mode and I am not particularly fond of it. I will not cook meat with it. This is probably where people will find the greatest amount of time savings, I guess, ie roasting a chicken. I have a BBQ with infrared broiler and I use that to roast my chicken. I just don't see the point of "spattering grease in" the oven that I have to clean up to save 20 minutes of cooking! YMMV. I will use the combi mode with frozen cooked food, ie casserole because it has already lost its "freshness" by being frozen...

I agree that your realtor's and the market's opinions make the most sense and should drive your decision. However, you did ask for our personal opinions, so here goes. For example you consider to purchase my place and you like it. Say, you like it a lot. It has many redeeming qualities. And then you see the kitchen needs some love. You can tell exactly it's 25 years old kitchen. Functional, comfortable, but outdated, and visibly worn out in some spots. As a buyer-how much would you expect me to go down in listing price? In numbers. As a buyer, I'd expect the cost of your home to be the cost of a similar, yet fully-updated home, less the cost of remodeling, and then maybe also less another $20,000-$30,000 or so to make it worth my while to undertake the bother of remodeling. For our one-bedroom condo, we paid $350,000 for a complete fixer upper. Hadn't been touched or changed since 1974 when it was built to the height of 1974 fashion. Comparable condos that had similar specs/locations and were already updated were selling in the realm of $450,000 at that time. Our remodel cost us about $70,000 with the various fun surprises we had during the remodel. Or would you think-"I have to redo it anyway, it doesn't matter"? To me, your kitchen would be a gut job. It's rare to replace worn cabinets without replacing everything else (and the brown phase of the '90s is my least favorite trend of the last 50 years). Therefore, your efforts to pretty it up slightly would be totally wasted on me and I would definitely think, as you say, "I have to redo it anyway, so it doesn't matter." I'm not going to pay more for cabinets I'm ripping out just because they have paint added to them before I rip them out. What would make a difference to me (short of complete remodel) is the difference between an unusable gut job and a gut job that is still functional. The latter means I can live in and use the house immediately and update over time. The former means remodeling before the house is at all useful or functional to me. Therefore, if you were trying to appeal to me, you have already said it's functional, but I'd polish it up as much as possible in that respect. Fix anything that's cumbersome or not working. Make sure the doors/drawers move smoothly and close properly. Tighten up hardware. Replace any appliances that aren't working or are a total pain to use with something newer and functional from craigslist. Take down things that are blocking natural light if it's free/easy to do so. If the faucet and/or sink are annoying to use and cheaply (sub-$300) replaced, then replace those. Basically anything that fights you or makes you want to rip your hair out and the house apart on a daily basis. Try to reduce all problems to things that are solely aesthetic or things you definitely cannot change with an expensive remodel. If you have a good layout, that'd also appeal to me, so be sure to point that out in your listing. Remodeling without needing to move anything is WAY cheaper than rejigging the whole kitchen/whole house. It does seem as if your target buyer is someone who is planning a remodel, so I'd advertise it in a way that caters to the remodelers and never mind what people looking for turn-key beauty would find slightly more appealing.