One of the things that I'd be looking at is the value of the house. If we're talking about a $100,000 house I wouldn't spend a grand on a ticket. If it's a million dollar house I'd be in. For a $250,000....maybe a $500 ticket? I'd try to scale your price to your market. I wouldn't sell a thousand dollar ticket if your house isn't a half million dollar home (appraised or tax assessed value). think of scaling your ticket price to your house value somewhat...ie a lot of tickets at 100 if it's a 200,000 or below price is likely to be more successful than trying to market a thousand dollar ticket for a house of that value. People are going to do a little homework on a grand price ticket so be prepared to have an appraisal that makes sense next to your tax assessed value. You throw me off when you say that the homeowners are going to get their full price no matter what....you mean they're not taking a bit of a loss here as a tax deduction? That seems....well like an easy way to sell a house. I'd come back a bit hardball on them. It's only a donation when you give something up. Getting full price and "offering" the difference to the HS seems a bit greedy..and a bit inappropriate. I certainly wouldn't expect you'd be paying all of the advertising costs etc. What on earth would their agent fee be? I think your HS might be getting snowed here. I've been involved with a lot of fund raisers....and this has a bit of a smell to it. Not on your part or the HS. I've seen charities take a hit when trying to take advantage of something that sounds too good to be true. People on the board don't think it through...the possible numbers make their eyes glaze over and they forget the downside. I think if you go forward as is with the homeowner expecting a full return, you're going to take a hit, not make money. You won't embaress yourself...the lottery winner will win something, but it could cost your society more than you might think. I'd go back with a reasonable return idea to the homeowner and the offer to split the costs of marketing, no matter the outcome. They can still take this as a deduction if it's a reimbursement to the HS. So it's still a decent deal for them.

I would advise you avoid doing business with AZ tile and Dean Jessup specifically. We had a horrible experience with them. Don't expect them to act with integrity or stand behind their product. We used a fabricator that was a personal referral from him. When we had discoloration and fingerprints that wouldn't come off of our Della Terra quartz he informed me I must have "scarred" it by cleaning with a paper towel. ( I called him within an hour of the fabricator leaving). We paid beyond stone to buff it with a cleaner at their recommendation. It mostly resolved the issue although as a result of the buffing the gloss and sheen no longer match our perimeter counters. Best we can figure out the fabricator applied turtle wax or something similar to disguise striations around the sink cutout. Which is why fingerprints couldn't be cleaned off. We still have some smudges. Bottom line rather than try to help us resolve the issue he was hostile and accusatory. He said the fabricator (a friend of his apparently) said it was fine so we must have done something. Do business with them at your own risk.

I'm not a designer, but I wanted to tell you what my experience with this stone has been. I have white macaubus quartzite, and I can tell you for sure that it looks really good on top of black cabinets. I don't know if the buttercup colored cabinets would look good with the macaubus. I think white, off white, light or dark grey, dark blue and black/off black look good with this stone. But I did see one pic on Houzz that had stained brown cabinets with it which looked good. You are right that it's easy to clean and care for. We treat it just like granite and it has not stained, chipped or etched. It fits well with the style of my kitchen and house. My kitchen is transitional. I don't have anything as bold as your entertainment center. All that being said, I think you should design everything around your entertainment center since you said you really like it and that it is definately staying. I already told you I'm not a designer, but just envisioning the macaubus counter, black cabinets below, buttercup colored uppers, and the large brown entertainment center - they just don't seem to go together. I think if I were you I'd decide which element you love the most and design around that. If you decide the central designing element is the quartzite, and you want the black cabinets under it, then maybe you could paint the entertainment center the same distressed black. But if you decide that the stained entertainment center is your favorite element, then maybe you do stained brown cabinets on the island under the quartzite to tie in the stained look. My semi-designer friend told me to always have elements int he room "talk" to each other. We didn't use a designer. This little bit of advice helped me out. Each finish or color has something else in the space that it talks to. If you give the entertainment center something to talk to in the kitchen (by painting it the same distressed black as the island, or having a stained element in the kitchen), then it will no longer be the elephant in the room; it will look like you always planned it to be there with your kitchen. Sorry to go on and on. Something about this post got to me!

We have had almost the exact same issue with our corian. The builder wouldn't even come to check it only went by the pictures we sent. Then blamed it all on something "very hot" had to do that! I can tell you now, it did not. There is also a large dip or warp over the dishwasher. When we pulled it out there is absolutely no heat barrier or insulation to protect the corian. The installer also never sealed the sink basin. Which we found out the hard way when our sink overflowed. The installer/builder takes no blame Won't even come to look or tell us what we can do. There is a ten year warranty on the corian, we've been fighting this for over two years now. The ten year warranty will be up in September of this year. What can we do???