Phenixk- Can't believe I came across your post. We are considering using Dorado(now Phildadelpia) Soapstone for a soapstone countertop and were wondering if it was a good choice. There is another company in the area that also sounds good, but as you said, Joe and Andy have been great to talk with so far. I am still trying to decide what to do-soapstone (?) or not, and would love to see a countertop that has been used in someone's home to see if it holds up as well as they say it does. How long have you had yours? Are you pleased with the wear, etc.? Also, I really like the idea of the lighter gray color, but I am not sure if it would stay that way (without oiling it) like they say, and look good. Our other option is to use 12 x 12 retified porcelian tiles. I want a primitive country look since I have a house full of antiques.

Yay! A good mail day! Strangely enough I have 3 things to mail out to friends today so I will go do that thinking about happy mail. I didn't mail order any flowers this year. I started thinking about it in July but it's been so incredibly hot and dry I'm glad I changed my mind. We got a little bit of rain today and it evaporated as it hit my brick patio. :0

Pesky, that is great to hear. I must have missed the backstory on your son's incarceration--it sounds so ridiculous and awful. So sorry your son had to go through all that (and you, too)!

What wonderful news! I'm delighted for you, bee. Here's hoping for a very smooth build and a quick sale of your current home. PS I hope this won't be an issue for you but you should carry your tape measure with you when you go to check the progress of your home. We've built twice and both times, there were framing mistakes. There was a fairly minor error, caught before we moved in, on our first house (and this with excellent framers). Unfortunately, we didn't realize until too late that 2 of the 3 man crew who started framing our 2nd house had never framed a house before. ;-p We caught one of their 3 mistakes right away and had it corrected but we didn't discover the other two until we had moved in. We're fixing one of them now (we're remodeling bathrooms, etc) but we can't do anything about the other without spending a *huge* chunk of $$$. They poured a concrete pier and installed a support post 18" over from where it was supposed to go. We didn't realize this had happened until we tried to move the relatively small sized sofa into the playroom. We had to remove the door, take off the sofa's legs and we still barely managed to get it in because the of tight angles created by the support wall in the wrong place. There is a solution - sectional sofas - but it does narrow our furniture choices for this room. So fingers crossed that you don't have any problems like this ... but take your tape measure with you, all the same.