I have used componants from kingsmetal.com as detail in a ipe rail system combined with alum balusters but I am thinking your project requires a complete metal hadrail. I painted the fancy steel balusters at the shop with several coats of high solids industrual black paint but it is what it is , they will require paint as needed. I use a local steel guy for post brackets and such He builds rail systems all week long but the cap rail is thin. That would be the trick geting a wide cap rail to shelter the actuall balusters and bottom rail from colecting rain as well as the conections not offering a place for water to colect. Usually the conection to the deck is a bolted little plate a person should be sure its painted all around with a rubber gasket. I bid and did a refinish welded steel rial around 300 ft 4 years old it had started to rust in all those 3 places. We built a plastic tent around the whole thing,taped off everything, sprayed it black with an airless,four coats. $3,800. J.

DH picked up mine yesterday and I just got a look at the bottle. It's Ferti-lome brand and the bottle says "Soil Acidifier Plus Iron". Did we get the right thing? This ran $5.99/quart. It's raining here and probably will be for a few days. I'll be out of town for 4 days, so don't know when I'll get to test it.

I have had five Rowenta irons over the years (Professional model) and they were wonderful. Recently purchased their "Perfect Iron" and it is a huge disappointment. Leaks water all over and when it is on end water drips out of the closed opening where you fill up the water tank. This iron is their most expensive model and it has to be the worst. My dog shakes whenever I go into the laundry room and she knows I am going to iron. The noise it makes from the steam release is so loud it hurts her ears. I have to pray for a sunny day so she can go outside and not hear it. Unfortunately, the steam goes into the air and not on the clothes.

I'm not sure I followed the explanation you received from the GE rep. Or maybe the rep was giving you an engineer's explanation of "Pulse Width Modulation." PWM is a way of using power in bursts to effect energy transfer equivalent to turning a traditional electric or gas burner up or down. It is kind of like averaging. You cycle the power on and off slowly to simulate lower energy transfer. Cycle it faster and with longer pulses, you get more energy transfer and the effect of turning up the power or gas on a traditional hob. That's how most microwaves work, btw. What we're talking about is how much energy gets transmitted into the cooking vessel. The PWM is just a way of governing the amount of energy being applied to the pan. The net effect is the same as turning power or gas up and down. Maybe somebody else can better explain the theory of the what the rep suggested? On your question about cookware to buy, let me suggest try a new post with links to the cooking and cookware forums here where you can get more direct responses. Also, rather than have me give a cookware 101 lecture (pontificate?), I suggest you try a site like Serious Eats which already has a pretty good discussion of "essential cookware." (Click on the highlght to go to the article.) I think Cook's Illustrated also may have one if you have access to their site. My responses to your specific cookware questions are: 1. I certainly would and do mix pan from different brands and lines. Most folks here would advise you to do so. Nothing necessarily wrong with buying sets, of course, but you may do better by picking and choosing. 2. I have only two Demeyere pans, both labeled as "Demeyere 7 TripleInduc.." Bought them on clearance from the Zwilling website you noted above for the plancha. One of my pans is a ten-inch frying pan. The other is the 21"x13" big brother of the plancha/teppanyaki/griddle you linked above. 3. I have both a roasting pan and a dutch oven. Frankly, if I had neither one, I'd look at the recommendations on Cook's Illustrated and Serious eats for decent dutch ovens and then I would also get a good , sturdy half sheet pan (it is a baking sheet with a short raised rim around the outside.) I'd use the baking sheet to impersonate a roasting pan by plonking in a cooling rack and setting the food on that. Also, if you get that plancha/griddle/teppanyaki, it can do a bang-up job as a shallow roasting pan, too. These days, I use my big roasting pan mainly for very big and juicy birds. YMMV. 4. Re "straight-sided" versus slope-side skillets, there is no "must" for induction. Get the slope-sided pan that you think you will like using better.