Finally remodeled the kitchen in our 50s California ranch style house. Waited 18 years but it was worth the wait. Room is about 12 x 12, U shaped but the fourth wall has the fridge and some pantry space. BEST THING: repainting the original cabinets (creamy white, Benjamin Moore Pottery Barn Mascarpone) and hardware (that old black colonial stuff) to save $$ for top notch appliances. I replaced my old cheap wall oven & fridges in kitchen and laundry with a 48" Sub Zero. It is quiet and it is so flat -- I gained a wider walkway through my kitchen. Even though the fridge is smaller than the two fridges that it replaces, I can fit everything in there that I need (though now I understand the popularity of the "drink station" fridge!) I replaced my 42" avocado green cooktop with the La Cornue Cornufe 43" in Provence Blue with brass trim. I did not want to give up double ovens, but the usual Viking / Wolf etc. 48" would require me to give up too much cabinet space, plus I never liked the huge oven and tiny oven combo and cramming 8 burners into the space where I used to have four plus a big griddle (that I used to plop things down, mainly). Now I have 5 burners so I have room for big pots and handles. I was really nervous about having two smaller ovens. However, you get the half sheet pans from Williams Sonoma and they act as racks. The fitted roasting pans that come with the stove work fine. I roasted a big five bone prime rib in there. I use my ovens so much more now than I ever did before, especially for meats. That stove is a thing of beauty and a real show stopper in the kitchen. LOVE the blue. So YES, the appliances make all the difference. ALSO LOVE having everything look kind of old -- we have Carlisle wide plank hard wood in rustic white oak (knotholes and marks); we have Barroca soapstone with some white veining; my cabinets are not pristine but they fit with the overall look. Patina galore even with new things! GO CHEAP with the faucets and just get chrome. With everything else stainless, it's nice to have something more glittery on the countertop. We have chrome in every room with plumbing and all of the rooms "match" even though we have faucets from different manufacturers. Accidental benefit: We hid the trash can in a pull out inside one of the low cabinets. We just attached the door face to the pullout mechanism. Well, one of my undercounter cutting boards slides out perfectly so that I can chop and then sweep the trash directly into the trash can. Sweet! By getting the new fridge, I gained more countertop space to the right of the fridge. I was able to have a built in shelf made for my microwave to get it up off the counter. We converted one of the broom closets in the laundry room into a tiny little bar. We used a remnant from our countertops for the counter; we spaced shelves for wine and soda storage. My husband routered out a few leftover strips of the hardwood to make wine glass racks on the top of the cabinet. It's kind of cute. What I'd change? I don't dislike my Kitchen Aid dishwasher, but for some reason it is hard to load small things like pyrex bowls, small cereal bowls, etc. It is great for tons of plates and glasses. However, I like to cook and I use a ton of those little custard cups for prep. I store leftovers in 1c, 2c, 3c, bowls and they never seem to fit right. I did not get the dispenser on the Sub Zero because I think it will stay cleaner and also the dispenser takes up room inside. However, I do miss crushed ice more than I thought I would. I always dreamed I'd have a fancy backsplash behind the stove. However, this stove is so beautiful that I do not want to upstage it. I will just hang a pot rail behind it like you see so often in the ads for the stove. Also I did lose storage space -- we moved a hanging cabinet over the countertop peninsula. I lost my baking rack storage when I hid the trash can. I lost my pots and pans storage when I replaced my cooktop with the drop in stove. I have been getting rid of old things and making room for new things but I am still moving items around to figure out where they should go.

One thing I would change: Get the delayed start timer to be more able to measure timeframes that are less than an hour. The one I have lets me choose hours. Apparently also less than an hour, but it's not very fine-grained there. The dial LOOKS like it takes delay start times of less than an hour, but it doesn't really do that. Sometimes I'm going out to do an errand, and I want it to start and finish before I get back. Instead, it hasn't even started yet when I come home, or it has barely started. Defeats the purpose. Counterproductive. The complete opposite of what I wanted. Frustrating. So, I've had to teach myself to turn the dial to the last click (also very coarse and not very finegrained). Even then it's not impressive. Why can't I have a delay of 10 minutes? Why can't it be easy to turn, and reliably set at ten minutes? OK, I realize that many will say "who cares" and "why do you need to delay start for ten minutes". This is the feature that I want, for my own reasons. It will determine my next purchase. If I move I'm selling with a wonderful FL washer already installed and in its place. HTH

Coming from the industry I really find this thread very informative. From the posts the biggest surprise to me was no one mentioned "I wish I had installed automation on my pool". Maybe it is explained everyone did get automation when they installed the pool. Automation for a pool is like a remote for a TV. The least surprising thing I read was the concern of all the power used by a pool and driving up electric bills. In defense of the PB; the IntelliFlo and Intelliflo 4 speed are very recent product introductions to our industry. These products change the way a PB has thought about pumps in the past. Unfortunately the prevailing PB's thinking was: the bigger the pump the better. A 2 HP power had to be better than a 1.5 HP pump. Actually if you only have 2" suction pipe they are both about the same except the 2HP will be louder because the 2" pipe cannot draw the water required to operate the pump effectively. This thinking has been really around since the beginning of time. Now a company comes out with a completely different pump that requires completely different thinking. The thinking now has to be: Take a pump and set the RPM's of the pump to operate the pool at it most optimum, efficient performance. No more bigger is better thinking. It will be only a matter of time before all the choices of HP are no longer available - just one pump and you set the RPM speed. Presently the minimum energy savings of a IntelliFlo pump verses a standard pump is 30%. That is due to the rare earth magnets that are used in the motor. A long story short a standard pool pump needs to create a magnetic field through the motor windings to turn the shaft of the motor. The IntelliFl pump is a magnetic and this alone saves 30%. Now set the RPM's for the actual GPM your pool requires and the savings begin to move from 30% up 90%. The savings will average 60% on most pools. That means if your bill is $100.00; it will now be $40.00. Lastly two more points: PGE and other utilities offer a minimum of $250.00 rebate for just buying this pump and this pump can do more than one application. In other words and in many cases you can replace a pump therefore having one pump do two applications - that equals super savings. Each day more and more PB's are beginning to understand the concept and see the benefits of these pumps. A month ago at a industry show in Las Vegas there was a IntelliFlo/ Variable Speed seminar and the room had well over 200 people in it. A year ago this seminar was not even offered.

I had also had enough of the fried motherboards in ovens/ranges, so I went low-tech. I got a Bertazonni in all gas. I had planned on buying the Electrolux Icon DF but the oven was really low ... My cat would have no trouble checking if cookies were done but I would have to bend inhalf to do it. Now, I love my Bert BUT ... I wish the oven could go lower in temp (it can't go below 275F). I knew that going in, and looking back I would still make the same choice today. It's just the one thing I would change, if I could. I love how accurate the oven is, though. I love how evenly it cooks trays of cookies. The burners are great and for a stainless steel range, it really stays clean well. Having the top made from once piece of steel with no seams is great. The woman who cleans my house 2x/mo even commented that its really easy to clean (unlike many of the stainless steel appliances she hates to deal with). 2 last thoughts: I also love that it was made in Italy (as opposed to a country with lax environmental standards). And - I know it bugs some people that the oven throws heat into the house, I like that the oven door stays cool ALL the time. That feature, BTW, is what throws so much heat into the kitchen. It pumps air through the hollow part of the door so the front panel doesn't get hot when the oven is on. So, yes, I do really like my range and like the price (half of the E-lux Icon, the money we saved let us replace our fridge when it was sounding like a dying herd of antelope). I feel like it was a very good product for the price, and it looks pretty, too :) However, if you are short (or very flexible) the Electrolux Icon racks were on ball bearings and darn, that was tempting. Plus the interior is a pretty blue. All in all, though, a Bertazzoni might be worth looking at if you have sworn off the electronic-laden ranges.