Woo hoo! How exciting for your son. I wish him well on this endeavor and hope he has a fabulous experience. I emailed by daughter, who replied today, but your post above answers many of her questions. She taught ESOL in Thailand for 2.5 years, staying on for an extra 6 months because one teacher cancelled at the last minute. She had a wonderful experience. She is now living and teaching in a private school in Arezzo in Italy and loves her job, teaches all ages, etc. Here is her response, though some of the info might be too late for your son, it may benefit someone else reading this. "As for the guy going to South Korea...it could be that someone quit halfway through the year. Who knows! It might depend on what kind of school it is - would he be teaching in a public school, or is it a private language institute? I know there are (or definitely were when I was looking a few years ago) lots of jobs in southeast Asia, and it's a lot easier to find work there than other areas, like Europe, due to demand. It does sound like he might be jumping into the job just because his girlfriend is leaving, but is that really such a bad thing? If he's not putting his degree to use, in my opinion teaching English in South Korea would be a better/ more enriching alternative than working at Best Buy! A good life experience, even if it doesn't lead to anything career-wise. It would be good to check out the school as thoroughly as possible - have they got a website? Are you sure they're a 'respectable' school? What kind of contract are they offering? Will they help him get a work visa? That would be one of the most important things to find out. Will they help him find accommodation, etc.? Can he get the email of other teachers working there and write them to get a firsthand account of what living there is like? How easy is it to get around if you don't speak Korean? etc." Terriks, I second Sherry's recommendation for Skype if you don't already have it. That is how we usually communicated with her. With the video, we could also 'see' her apartment and friends. Don't forget to start planning a trip to go visit him! - Elisabeth

I know this is an old thread, but it seems to have spurred some interest over the last few years. I, too, wanted to know if these grate heaters worked and came across this thread, but wasn't really convinced one way or the other from peoples' responses. On a whim, I decided to buy one, so I figured I could contribute if there are others like me who are curious. First of all, I went with the Cozy Grate Heater from woodlanddirect.com, and I've owned it for about 2 months (November and December). Granted these aren't the coldest months in New England where I live, but I felt I had enough experience with the unit so far to give my two cents. Here goes: - Does the unit put off heat? In short, yes. I keep my thermostat set on 60-62 degrees. Within a couple hours of lighting a fire, my living room (where the fireplace is) is up to 70-72 degrees. It's an approximately 10x20' room and it gets plenty toasty. Some of that heat does go into the rest of the house, but primarily it heats the space where the fireplace is located. - Will this unit provide heating for your whole house? Not really. I do notice the thermostat climb a few of degrees in other parts of the house, but again, primarily it seems to heat the fireplace room. I would say these units are best suited as supplemental heat for your existing heating system. - Do these heaters provide comparable heating to a fireplace insert or wood stove? Not really. My in-laws have an insert and my mom has a wood stove, so I can make a fair comparison. From my experience, the grate heater burns wood quicker than wood stoves & inserts and doesn't put out the same amount of heat. My guess is this has to do with air control - inserts and wood stoves are airtight and you have complete control over the amount of combustion air. A fireplace door (even with a damper feature) is not completely airtight. My mom's wood stove can burn a few logs all day long. I could burn though the same amount of wood in just a few hours. Again, the unit does a great job providing supplemental heat to your fireplace room, and a little bit for the rest of the house, but they aren't going to be a whole-home heating solution. One last consideration that isn't mentioned anywhere online: The unit I purchased (Cozy Grate Heater) is designed to operate most efficiently with the fireplace doors CLOSED. It says so in the instructions. However, I discovered that most fireplace doors are made of tempered glass and are NOT recommended to be closed while a fire is burning. Tempered glass can only withstand temperatures of about 500 degrees. They do make glass doors from a special type of glass called ceramic glass which is INCREDIBLY expensive - this is the same glass found in inserts and wood stoves. Before I bought the unit, I wanted to also purchase new fireplace doors. After discovering this, I decided to keep my existing doors just in case the glass on the new doors ended up cracking. I did call the company that makes the cozy grate heater and asked about this. A nice woman I spoke to told me she's never had a customer call and complain that their glass doors cracked. So far (again, 2 months in), I haven't had an issue - I don't build raging fires and I keep the burning logs at least 6 inches from the glass. Just be aware of this if you're considering buying a grate heater. All in all, I'm very satisfied with my grate heater. I wasn't expecting it to perform as well as an insert, but rather wanted it for supplemental heating of my living room. I love having a fire, but hated the smoke and lack of heating efficiency. This unit has certainly met my expectations. Sorry for the long-winded response, but I'm hoping this will help others out there who are in the same situation I was two months ago!

After lots of hard work, yes. We're 20 years into this marriage. When we married (2nd for both), I had a 14 yo daughter, he had 5 and 10 yo sons. Within 3 yrs we had one more son and one more daughter. Needless to say, we both worked full time. The first years were hell. My daughter was a princess and was not thrilled about the male invasion or the loss of our "Gilmore Girls" lifestyle. She was - to be charitable - difficult for the first year or so... she loved my husband, but hated the change in lifestyle. Thankfully, her acting out was limited and her girlfriends all loved the idea of babies and a big family and being part of the herd; peer pressure was in our favor. The s-sons were a challenge. They were with us every other weekend, 6 weeks in the summer, and most school vacas. There were many issues - lack of personal hygiene, disrespect, walking away from their messes, plus throwing footballs, baseballs, etc in the house - often directly at breakables... intentional damage disguised as accidents (that came to an abrupt end when they mistook one of their father's prized possessions for mine). Much of our trouble was fueled by their mom - she gave them permission to call my daughter and myself D----- B--s... "because that's what they are!", they would chew their food at meals and spit it back on the plate... "It's a game we play at home - my mother says we can do it here if we want." They were not big fans of soap, shampoo or water - clean clothes were unheard of ( they would arrive with a bag of dirty clothes) and the younger one even arrived one time with an awful rash on his 'lower extremities' that the doctor said was strictly from filth! The younger one actually went through a spell where he would not use toilet paper; he wiped whatever on the walls!!! I cried with relief many times as soon as they went out the door and headed for home. My husbands guilt was enormous; his fear of alienating and losing his kids was crippling. I was afraid to rock the boat or come across as a witch and I didn't want to undermine my husband. Ultimately, after many terrible arguments, we came to the conclusion that we were not presenting a united front. We also came to realize that my daughter and I were really fringe issues. The core problem was the boys lack of respect for my husband and his condoning their disrespect and their behavior by catering to them. He also realized that the problem had become so significant that he was well on the path to destroying his relationship with them by virtue of his behavior. Kids instinctively smell fear and they know just how to leverage weakness. We had many family meetings where we invited their input but made clear that we set the rules. It took a long time (and a lot of tears) before there was any progress, but it happened. I think ultimately the boys stopped being so angry when they recognized that they were hurting themselves as much as (maybe even more than) anyone else and expending a great deal of energy doing so. Over time, they started to become more objective - sometimes a little embarrassed - and they eased into our routine. I found that "the more the merrier" helped - we encouraged each of the older kids to bring friends along and we kept them busy  we went many places with two strollers and as many as 8 other kids between 7ish and 16ish? The herd/peer thing takes them into a world of their own where their behavior reflects on and impacts them - it's not about the parent/step parent. The kids are now 33, 30, 24 and the Âbabies are 18 and 17. All the kids are doing well. The older 2 have long since finished college and have good jobs. Number 3 is in his last year of college; number 4 started college this fall and number 5 is the only one still here at home (and we're broke, needless to say). I am not the boys' mother, but we have developed pretty decent adult-to-adult relationships. They come to me for advice and the older one asked me to do a reading at his wedding. Our first grandchild is due this month. We all consider ourselves to be family. The kids do not think in terms of step and half sibs - they are brothers and sisters and are insulted when someone outside corrects them on the legal status of their relationships. The boys mother has backed off significantly, but has not given up. She has worked very hard to gain the allegiance of D-I-L and recently let me know that she was the babyÂs real grandmother. It has been a great deal of work and I sometimes wonder if I would have done it if I knew how difficult and painful it would become. After all the ups and downs and all the noise and confusion, we now find ourselves having to adjust to a new and much quieter life, and to each other. Our oldest recently reminded us that we had never been/lived together without kids - I guess that will be our next adjustment/ challenge!

A designer I hired in California suggested Smith & Noble. The in-home designer, Carolyn Shea, met with us and we knocked out custom shades and drapes of all types for a variety of windows, including an over-sized 8 ft tall 5 ft wide bathroom window, in less than a hour with the handy dandy design book. This particular designer knew how to guide all the specs and my other designer could 'yea' or 'nay' and help guide me. Very efficient. The order was over 10K and everything worked out: the products were well made, the install guy was polite, clean and efficient. Everyone showed up on time. The address listed on the invoice was Corona, CA. Unsure if that was a manufacturing center or a warehouse. Locally in Texas I twice contacted a Smith & Noble rep listed for my area (she is in Bastrop) and she never responded. For a current project in a different zip code, I'm taking one more chance on Smith & Noble. But if you are in Bay area, try Carolyn Shea. Everything was perfect and it was a huge variety of types of treatments ordered. Thanks to Jennifer Ott, who was the designer, found here on Houzz, that turned me on to her.