Late to this thread but "black earth" is basically a translation of the Russian chernozem, which is the classification and word used by Canadian and US soil classification systems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernozem It is traditionally / historically used - formally - for soil formed in prairie (steppe) grass areas through accumulation / decomposition of grasses. In Europe, much of Ukraine, in north america, large swaths of the prairies. Lots of humus, high in organic content (relatively), but it's not supposed to be just organic content. Considered great growing soil. So just stuff from the bottom of a peat bog may be similar in some respects, that's not what it's supposed to be. I recall reading that Ukraine and Russia have laws against selling true chernozem, but there's a black market and lots of other stuff just sold as chernozem. In Russian too 'chernozem' is almost just a synonym for 'good dark soil.' But: I don't think there's any consumer protection laws in north america against selling anything at all as 'black earth.' So it may not mean much more than dark-coloured earth or well-rotted compost; sounds nice, but buyer beware, just like with the word topsoil. I'd guess that outside areas with true chernozem buying the real stuff would be just about impossible (no way it would be economic to ship it).

I found the info and will paste at the end of this post but the picture can be pretty big. salbwil just tell us what program you are using to resize and right click on the picture and click properties on the drop down menu and tell us what size it is. Here are the posting instructions from the webmaster at hearth.com: OK, so hereÂs the deal - your member photos (in your member profile) is limited to a small size - about 150 pixels (dots) square. The little Avatar next to your posts is limited to the same or maybe 100 each way..... Regular pictures, like in this forum, can be fairly large - almost full screen (1000 wide by 1000 high) and up to 200KB (200,000 bytes). But, many folks donÂt know the basics of email and web pics - IÂll try to explain. Pictures sent to the web and by email are best at what is called "screen resolution" meaning that they somewhat match the size od the dots on our monitors. For our purposes, this is aout 72 DPI (or dots per inch)..... What the average person needs is an "Image Management Program" and NOT the one that comes with Windows! If you are a PC user, download the free program called Picasa - This will organize and store all the photos on your disk and also allow you to export smaller copies (for web, etc.) and to even fix the photos up a bit! Apple users already have an image management program, iPhoto, which comes with every mac. To prepare web photos in iPhoto, simply select the photo or photos, go to Export (or it might say Share in newer versions) and when the dialog box comes up use the part that says "scale no bigger than" to select what you want the size of the exported photo to be. For purposes of this board, a photo with a width of 400-700 is ideal. Now, with Picasa, it is pretty much the same thing. Select the photo or photos and go to Export to Folder- the box shown in the picture below will come up and then you can select the picture size - say 480 wide as in this example. The other slider will compress the file size so the picture loads faster. In most cases, anything over 50% is good. If you want to learn more about this stuff, dig around on the links at: http://www.hearth.com/hcc/ - these are links from a course I teach at night school. If you are a user of Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, use the "Image Size" dialog bx to convert your photo to 72 DPI and approx. 400-600 pixels wide (the height will work out automatically) - then use "Save for Web" and tryjpg "medium", file size should be really small. Of course, donÂt save changes to the original picture since you still want that big on your computer and for yourarhiving and storage.

Hi everyone, Thank you for all of the compliments - it means a lot from this forum:) The pulls are not very deep but do have a solid heavy feel, so if depth is an isue they may not be for everyone but we both have slim digitis - my hubby more so than I. We do NOT touch the doors using the pulls if that helps. Also our cab co. markets these as full overlay but they obviously are not but boy are they well made - shoud last 100 years. Our GC said they needed no adjustments at all to hang perfectly - perfectly square. And solid as a rock. You could Kahle's and ask - they are in PA. I bet they would be happy to answer any questions. Or Bill at J&L lumber in New castle DE (he is SO sick of me so don't mention me:). At Avalon the tile (floor and BS) was a bit under $10/sq ft price wise (closer to $6 I think) - good bargains. They are only in this area.

I'm glad your counters are not in danger of collapse anymore, but I have to disagree with what transpired here. 2x4s and plywood might be adequate to support the stone, but it's also butchery of your cabinets by hacks. It's like you got the drywall guys to do plumbing work for you just because they were in the same room. Stone professionals are NOT qualified to modify your cabinets! The cabinet installation should have been designed from the beginning to take the weight of stone. This is a builder and original KD error. What should have happened is that the stone guys should have refused to install the stone on top of your cabinets until you had a professional reinforce them. Yes, that would have been at additional cost to you to have a cabinet professional come in and do it right, but a cabinet professional would never have just screwed some plywood and 2x to the walls and called it a day. Stone professionals are NOT fine carpenters or cabinet installers. What they did will work, but it's not at all workmanlike and tidy and invisible. For anyone reading this in the future, it is NOT the stone professional's place to create support within the cabinetry for the counter tops. It is the cabinet professional's place to do that. You wouldn't want your cabinet guy trying to do a seam in your granite and you don't want your stone guy trying to hack a support into your cabinets. Get the right professional for the right job!