so It looks like you went with the Jotul 602?

we picked up a scandia 150 for our cabin...the older knock off of the 602..we nabbed it on craigslist for $150...added some fire brick and it works great in our little cabin.

Here is alink to an alcove project I did a while back.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kmswoodworks/4493390605/in/set-72157623700372901/

lots of added thermal mass with the black granite surround

Yup, we decided to go for broke and hope the fancy stove will be worth it.

That's quite a beautiful alcove! We're putting cheap tiles under our stove (on top of cement board) for a bit of extra thermal mass, but nothing anywhere near so beautiful!

You should put something in the alcove that reflects infrared well. E.g. polished aluminium.

We'll be using old roofing metal spaced one inch out from the walls as heat shields. They probably won't do as well at reflecting infrared as shiny metal would, but hopefully they'll help! (The real reason for putting the metal on the walls, of course, is to allow us to make the alcove smaller by decreasing the minimum required spacing.)