How's your leg pain going, surfergal? I was concerned about your having claudication, until I read that you'd had a stress test. With your age, I'm wondering if you need some calcium/magnesium supplements. When I started going though perimenopause, and my estrogen was sinking, I would get leg cramps very easily.........just by climbing a few stairs. So I suggest you start taking 1200mg calcium and at least 500mg magnesium a day (in 2 doses). The magnesium may give you diarrhea, so you can go down on the dose if that happens. Or if the calcium gives you constipation, you can go up on the magnesium. If I go one day without these supplements, my muscles start spasming. Good luck!

It's not as plasticky as I remember Swanstone was back in the day when I saw more Swanstone. There's none around me these days. It's more a stone-grit feel than that. It's not a hard shiny cold plasticky feel like a Silestone or other quartz. But it's close. It's warmer than a stone or an engineered quartz. If you can touch the unpolished side of a piece of engineered quartz, you will be closer. But it's more grit-feel than that, like the difference between two levels of fine sandpapers in the high hundreds or low thousands (... at the hardware store, go touch their sandpaper sheets. you could moisten them with a few flecks of snow from your mittens; it's allowed; moistening sandpaper is permitted.) This is way smoother than a knife-sharpening stone feel, so don't anyone conclude that it's a rough surface by any means. the color you chose is good for a production kitchen like yours because you can keep it clean and hygienic without overdoing it. Mine is under high lumen in a high lux environment so I have to Ajax+Comet the floor of my sink to matchy match the rest of it; it's a cosmetic thing, nothing fundamental. hth

I love old houses - the quality, the history (I was THRILLED when I saw the names of the owners of our then under 5 year old house on the 1930 census), and the style. If I don't win the lottery, I will never live in another "new" build (80's and up) because the vast majority of non custom built homes are just not up to my standards. Of the 4 new builds I lived in in my life, only two were decent. The last decent one had been built by a guy who had previously done commercial building. It was built to last and I have no doubt that one would still stand after a tornado. Because of the commercial background, the finish "prettyness" wasn't there, but those details were added later, by us. The last new build was a nightmare. The "quality" semi custom build was so lacking that I can't even imagine how much worse some of the mass produced really poor quality houses will last. Within the first 5 years the deck was partially rotting (no flashing between the house and it), the roof leaked at the chimney, many of the windows wouldn't work well and/or leaked at the top, lots of the trim wood was rotting out and the floors of both 1st and 2nd floor creaked in almost every spot as did the entire staircase. And then of course you had the "minor" issues like one couldn't use a hairdryer in the master bath before resetting the outlet in the upstairs bath if someone had used a hairdryer in it before the master bath. And the defective shingles requiring a complete reroof at 3 years is hard to forget. My brother has a friend who last year moved into a house in one of those new mass built neighbourhoods in South Carolina. Brand new. 6 months after moving in, a water pipe junction burst (iirc, they thought it hadn't been correctly connected or something) in the attic while they were on vacation and ruined most of the house and their items. The builder denied responsibility and the insurance company was blaming it on the builder since the house was still under "warranty" and it was turning into a huge mess, to say the least. New does not equal free of work and I'd rather strip wallpaper than deal with finding out what corners were cut.

I know the feeling, Shades- I'm enjoying an adult beverage right now. One of the first things I planted at our new place was 2 daffodils. That's right- two. The little church I visit up there had a sermon which related to daffodil bulbs, so each person got one in a little kit with fertilizer and instructions. I wasn't going to take one, but the cutest little boy ran up and was SO excited to give me one! Then folks I insisted I take two; one for me and one for my wife. In the spirit (pun intended) of the thing I felt obligated to plant them. We visited in February, and they were up and had buds. Alas, we weren't there for the actual flowers, but I was still excited. Two down; about 500 to go. I want to naturalize them all over the place.