meganmm, Thank you, we are enjoying it. I see I listed the name of the granite incorrectly in the above post. We have Madura gold in our master bath, the basement bath is kashmir gold. Let me give you some background on the countertop. Lowes had advertised last summer, in the Sunday supplement, a 48" pre fab granite top in Desert Gold for something like $269. In a little section to the side it said also available in Kashmir Gold, Black Absolute and Blue Pearl. Kashmir gold was close to what I was considering in "real" granite, so I went in to order it. No luck. The salesperson couldn't find a sku for it. After several days and plenty of phone calls, it became apparent that it was a misprint. After talking with the manager he agreed to sell me one for the advertised price, but it should have been closer to $600! So I got a really good deal on that. The tile is travertine and was a special order from Home Depot. The floor tiles were 18x18 and we cut them to do the hopscotch pattern. The wall tiles in the shower are 12x12 below the insert and the same tiles cut into 6x12 subways above. The insert itself is a 12x12 sheet of kashmir gold mosaic with a travertine pencil liner. We purchased all of the tile during a 20% off sale on special order tile at HD. Good luck with your project. Feel free to email me if you have anymore questions, since now that I have gone back to work I don't check in here very often.

For a 36" five burner cooktop, I also would look at the less expensive DCS or even a Bosch which, IIRC. is sold by AJ Madison for under $900. The Bosch has standard sealed burners. so not as versatile as the DCS. [EDITED TO ADD: just saw bmorepanic's post and I defer to the greater knowledge there on Bosch and Dacor.) My experience with cleaning sealed cooktops is that stainless is no easier to clean and sometimes harder because it can scratch more easily than a porcelain enamel surface. What I've found makes a big difference is the depth of the burner wells and the material used for the burner hardware. With deeper wells (typical of the more "pro-style" appliances), the cooktop surfaces are a but further away from the flames, so less bakes on. The porcelain-coated single-cap burners on the Bosch will require scrubbing with Barkeeper's Friend (BKF) where (I think) the DCS is using brass components which are less likely to stain and spot. I'm guessing the Dacor will be similar but have no experience with it. I have my doubts about a magically more easy cleaning surface. I wound up buying an NXR stove a few months back. It has no magic anything and it's cooktop is one of the easiest to clean that I have owned. Only induction was easier and that was mainly because I didn't have to move the big grates. And speaking of induction, your stainless pots may or may not be induction suitable. You need to test with a magnet. If a refrigerator magnet sticks, the pot will work on induction. However, a lot of stainless cookware is not magnetic. That said, induction has a lot to recommend it and there's a wealth of info and opinions here on the subject of induction cooktops. With your house being built, it probably would be a fairly simple thing to have a 240v 40a line installed for connecting an induction cooktop. Might want to have that done for future proofing in case you decide to swap out the gas for something else. As for fridges, top freezer models are the most energy and space efficient and the least expensive to buy. SO, I would psend a bit less on the cooktop and apply the savings to a bigger fridge. Seriously, a 14.4 cu. ft fridge is tiny for a house where you will be cooking on a 36" cooktop. Unless you shop everyday. The current Maytags are made by Whirlpool (which also owns and makes Amana and Kitchenaid and some of the Sears Kenmore brand). Pretty much any top-freezer you buy without an ice-maker or water dispenser is going to have about the same reasonably good reliability. (Consumer Reports most recent membership survey of 82,000 members who bought a top-freezer fridge since 2006 show all brands having a 7%-8% defect rate. With ice & water, Whirlpool top-freezers are about as reliable but it starts climbing with other brands and GE has defect rate of 13% for top freezers with ice and water). You might want to look at the 18 cu. ft M1TXEGMY or one of the 17 cu. ft. Frigidaires which will run $700 to $800. I have no recent experience with wall ovens, so I'll have to defer to others on that. The dishwasher choice is another one where you might be able to get something better. Maytags are a Whirlpool product. Some Whirlpool made DWs have reportedly shorted out and burned out the circuit boards and several have started fires. Do a search here and you will find people with some pretty strong opinions and links to the sites discussing the controversy. Consumer Reports generally favors Bosch, Miele, and Kitchenaids DWs in more or less that order. They like the Bosch Ascenta line best, some of which can be had from AJ Madison at the same prices as the Maytag "77" model you selected. IIRC correctly, the Ascenta's are supposed to cycle a load in 95 minutes while the Maytags run between 115 and 125 minutes, and the Bosch DWs are generally regarded as noticeably quieter that the Maytags and Whirlpools. The microwave is a commodity product as you've doubtless already discovered. This post was edited by JWVideo on Mon, Feb 18, 13 at 23:37

gina171 and Tara... the finish is blue granite Pebble Sheen. We LOVE the color. It is a beautiful blue! Tara...Our coping is tumbled torreon and we really like the look. We used the 24" length (the longest we could get)because we wanted it to have a more elongated look. As for the distance from the patio...I was worried,too. We couldn't go further back because of septic boundaries. It turns out that we have plenty of room. I haven't measured how wide the space is, but it sounds similar to yours. I have kids and a dog and have had no problems at all. I think yours will work!!!! Thanks for the comments. I will post more pictures after we have finished up. Good luck with your projects.

Thank you all so very much for the kind words! :) I was pretty much the sole designer for the whole project (house, pool, etc.) and have never done anything like this before, so it is really nice to read compliments. I was not sure about some of the things until it was all done and seemed to come together. I had previously elected a very iridescent cobalt glass tile (LOVE the look of that on a pool), but I felt it fought with the setting, so I changed it. I think it is much more zen and calming. One of the best things to me is how much my husband - who was not at ALL excited about the pool - has been enjoying it. We have never had one before, and find ourselves in it all the time, and our weekends really revolving around the pool and the quiet space that surrounds it. It added a completely different and welcome dimension to our new home build, and has made time outside so much more enjoyable. It's funny. Now I can't imagine NOT having one.