Where cheating on primer really shows up, is if someday you decided to hang wallpaper. The drying of the wallpaper paste will literally pull the paint off the drywall. I have run across this "self priming" paint when hanging wallpaper. I would put a pre-paper sealer on the walls first, and then hang the paper. All done quite "kosher" and according to accepted practices. A couple days later the customer would call and complain that the seams were lifting. Sure enough, the seams are coming up and the paint is stuck to the back of the wallpaper,. leaving bare drywall paper showing on the wall! Obviously, the paint was not bonded to the wall! I know of no way to correct this problem, other to remove the wallpaper and advise the customer not to hang more wallpaper. So long as only paint is used, the bonding situation does not seem to be aggravated.

wryorwhite -- Don't be scared by all this talk of yellowing. It's exaggerated. Bear in mind that oil-based paint was essentially all that was used in American homes through the 1980s -- so unless you're a teenager, you were around when any house you'd walk into (including the one in which you grew up) had its walls painted with oil-based paint. Trust yourself and your own experience...do you ever remember walking into a house and thinking to yourself "My, these walls are awfully yellowed!"? I sure don't. When's the last time you've heard someone say "Oh, look at those walls! They've gone from looking like snow to looking like Big Bird! This is certainly oil-based paint!"? Never. Yes, oil-based paint yellows very slighly with time. So do all oil-based products, including the clear polyurethane with which wood floors are most often finished. This "yellowing" effect is minimal, and it's not something that jumps out at you or is offensive or anything like that. You have to actively look for it, and the only people who do that are (a) homosexuals, and (b) people who work in the marketing departments of latex-based paint companies. The drawbacks of latex-based paint have largely been resolved in the past few years. The latex-based paints of 2008 are a far cry from the ones of 20 years ago. This is especially true with the high-quality brands like Pratt & Lambert. Modern high-end latex pains bond to drywall well, hold up to moisture and cleaning well, etc. However - latex-based paints aren't as good as oil-based paints when it comes to moisture and dirt resistance, standing up to scrubbing, and bonding to wood. They never can be, because oil (unlike latex) naturally resists water, and naturally soaks into wood (rather than just sitting on top like a skin). Think of what happens when you mix oil and water -- they don't mix; instead, they just separate and keep apart. So moisture and dirt don't bond to the oil-based paint, so it's very easy to clean without damage. In addition, oil-based paint soaks into wood -- unlike latex-based paint, which forms into a skin that you can peel off. This is one of the big drawbacks of using latex paint on high-traffic wood items (like kitchen cabinets). My house has latex-based paint on the walls and ceilings, and oil-based paint on all the wood trim (including the doors and windows and cabinets) -- this is a time-tested and popular arrangement, and it has held up very well for me and my neighbors. Speaking of polyurethane -- there are two types, oil-based and water-based (latex-based) - same as paint. ALL of the manufacturers -- Minwax, Cabot, etc. -- recommend strongly in favor of using the oil-based polyurethane on floors. It's tougher, it holds up better to traffic and moisture, and this "yellowing" effect that the self-proclaimed experts yammer on about are so minimal as to be non-existent. The same is true with the oil-based vs. water-based (latex-based) paints. Again, trust yourself and your own experiences -- how many times have you walked into a home and thought to yourself that the painted walls and ceilings, or the wood floors, were yellowed?

I doubt it's the problem. Behind the bricks should be an air space, then the sheathing, then a conventional stud wall with the insulation. A little missing mortar should have no effect. An easy check would be to just stuff something into that hole. As said above, cut into the drywall and see what's going on behind there. Drywall is easy enough to repair. You might find an area where the insulation is missing or maybe it got wet (wet insulation loses it's ability to insulate).

@User @Anne Mulholland Cleaning is the one thing that I really dislike about the oven. But to be far I would hate cleaning any oven :) The top cooktop is extremely easy to clean. Most of the time I just use soap and water. Maybe once a week I will use Cerama Bryte to really polish the top and make it look new again. The grill is easy for the most part. The heavy metal rack and tray\basin can be just washed normally in the sink alone with the aluminum housing it sits on. The steal tray\bason that the rack sits in get discolored and nothing I have tried will remove it. The aluminum housing can also be removed and cleaned. What I dislike about the grill is there is no way that I can see to clean the top were the element is. If anyone has figured that out let me know. The actual ovens are about the same as every other oven that I've had that does not have the self cleaning feature. In my case, I removed the oven racks and the easy slider racks and bottom panel that @A Bowditch referred to. These can all be cleaned in the sink. Even though the manual has instructions on how to remove the vertical side rails that he racks lock on to, I could not remove them. (Cleaning would have been a lot easier once removed). I also removed the back plate that the fan sits behind. Then I used a oven cleaner that was recommended to me by a friend and let it sit overnight. I did not use anything like easy-off as i read that this could damage some ovens and I didn't want to risk it. Some hard to remove spots required the help of a razor blade to help remove. All in all I wish this oven had a self cleaning option, but without being able to remove the side rails i don't know if i would trust using it anyway. Hope that helps.