I love this thread. I have been searching high and low for information on Thermador since the few I found on Facebook were primarily negative. I want to buy the Thermador Freedom 36 inch cooktop and reading at all the reviews is very positive, well except for the connectivity with the hood and long wait times. Also, i am assuming here that cooktop can be used without the hood as well? The last comment on this was a year ago. Any further comments/reviews/experiences would be highly appreciated. I am in NJ and everywhere I call I am told there will be a 5-7 month wait time (Designer Appliances, Reno's etc). Anyone know of any appliance stores where this would be in stock? Thanks again. Glad I found this thread.

Mary, Are you referring to window restoration or just sealing up some existing windows? The two are going to be very different type professionals. If it it just sealing up some exterior trim on windows, a decent painter can do that. If its window restoration, that is a different ball of wax. Window restoration is a very niché marketplace. The best thing to do is start with a Google area search near your home and especially in those areas that are more heavily concentrated in older homes. Next would be to ask around any of the historic districts that are in your area and see who they might have a list for. Hope this helps.

My daughter and I are just finishing up a project of doing over one of the empty bedrooms as a guest room. It's been a better experience than I was anticipating. My daughter surprised me with her degree of flexibility and cooperation. She and I are both very opinionated and our tastes overlap some but she tends more toward contemporary and I lean toward country/traditional. I was worried we'd get into a conflict over it, but we've done great! I wanted purple for a paint color, but she talked me into blue. That was fine, my husband's favorite color is blue so I thought it was about time we did something in a color he likes. Then we went to the paint store together and we were pretty close on the color shade we wanted. When we got to the store, we both decided to go by the rule of choosing one shade lighter than you think you need and we both LOVE the color, now that it's done! She liked a contemporary duvet cover and I didn't hate it, but I feel deprived without florals. [g] So, in a stalemate, she asked what her father liked. She's been very mindful that the room is at our house and we should like it. Very thoughtful of her. So when I gave him the choices he chose the exact duvet cover I wanted, without knowing it was that one. I was very surprised. Now that the room is just about done, my daughter likes the duvet cover as much as I do. She wants roman shades on the windows and I like that idea too, but I LOVE lace at the window. Since I had lace panels in the house and it's not winter yet, we put them up for the time being and she really likes them now too...lol. And I'll take my time finding some roman shades before winter. We have influenced each other in a positive way and now we all like the room. It's SO good to have a room done, but who ever said, do one room and nothing motivates you more to start fixing everything was so right. My father used to say the same thing. My mother would suggest they start painting and he would always begin by saying 'No, you paint one room and you end up painting the whole house and replacing the carpet, etc.' It's very noticeable that we need to paint the rest of the first floor now. It has been 15 years since we painted last. [g]

We had a Thermador range with an integrated downdraft for about 14 years, in the peninsula. I liked the arrangement so well that we kept the location of the stove, refrigerator and sink for the remodel. We also kept the Thermador to use in the new kitchen. That was not a good idea. The stove had problems almost immediately when it was reinstalled. The downdraft was doing fine. Now we had a real problem. We had to replace the stove, but finding one that would fit was a problem. That wasn't the biggest problem for us. We thought we were going to have to install a hood. Our kitchen is at the end of a long room and I remember how I hated the overhead suspended cabinets that were in the original kitchen. I just didn't want something hanging from the ceiling and destroying the view. Since we are old, we wanted a range with a self cleaning oven. It was hard to find one with our specifications that would fit into the space designed for the new kitchen. We bought a Dacor range with a Dacor downdraft. These are separate units. I love the range and the downdraft works perfectly, for us. Long story to get to the point. When the new stove and downdraft were installed, the installers left the vent pipe with the opening upside down on a piece of wood under the house. That mean the downdraft did not work correctly. We could not figure out the problem, so my husband crawled into the crawl space and took pictures. I guess they figured old people would never figure this out. We had to hire another company to redo the venting. They took the vent pipe straight out to the side with no turns. It works perfectly. It even vents the steam from my rice cooker that is on the counter next to the stove. My point is that if installed correctly, a downdraft works.