Shoezoo, I haven't posted photos to the Finished Kitchens blog or too many here because my home office is not set back up yet so I can't really properly prepare the photos for showing (cropping, color adjustment, sharpness, etc.) but I'll show you a before and after of the kitchen and bar area and give you the list of woods, manufacturers, colors, and finishes. Jodi- Cabinets: Valley Custom Doors Cherrywood with a Brandy stain and chocolate glaze (http://www.valleycustomdoor.com/) Cabinet Pulls: Kraftmaid Satin Chrome 5" center pulls (Style 205) (http://www.kraftmaid.com/) Cabinet Glass: Reeded cut on the horizontal Granite: Impala Black (aka Nero Assoluto Zimbabwe) from Dal-tile (http://www.daltile.com/) Back Splash: Jeffrey Court Chapter 9: Pietra Opus Quartz Brick Fire and Ice http://www.jeffreycourt.com/) Switches/Dimmers/Outlets and Wall Plates: Aspire by Cooper Wiring Devices (http://www.cooperwiringdevices.com/) Floors: Victoria Floors Antique Collection Coique Chocolate, 7" wide planks(http://www.victoriafloors.com/ingles/home.html) Mini-Pendants: Tech Lighting Egypt in Dark Amber with satin nickel trim with a 4" flush round canopy Freejack system in satin nickel Recessed lighting: 4" cans with satin nickel trim and black interior. Extras: Toe-kick drawer, sink pull-out storage Appliances: Bosch microwave, oven and dishwasher. GE Monogram 30" cooktop. 25CuFt Kenmore Elite (by LG) French door, bottom freezer refrigerator with water dispenser Paint: ValSpar (Lowes) Ultra Premium Polished Silver

Stephanie - Just saw this. Our walls are some shade of tan (sorry can't recall the fancy name right now - LOL - from the BM Aura line). Here are a few pics from when we were in progress (before I did the backsplash, first one is actually with our old cabinets still up when we were first painting, the others - you can see where we painted vs white drywall / primer where the old cabinets wer, etc). I haven't had a chance to do full pics of the entire finished kitchen yet but these should give you some idea of the wall color. I am hoping late this week to get full finished photo's up of everything I think the FIre and Ice would go great with your granite choices. As to samples - my local tile dealer in Pittsburgh ordered me samples - but I was local. Perhaps you could call one of the dealers 3 hrs away and ask if they could have a smaple sent directly to you. My tile dealer ordered them at no cost and would have wanted them back if I didn't go with the tile (but I did so he said just keep the sample). And yes - I am sure you could add whatever color glass accent pieces you wanted as long as you can find the color you want in that size. I know the people I dealt with at Morena tile were quite helpful (they shipped to me from California - I ordered the glass Burnt Umber suqares over the phone). There was a slight shipping mishap (I had ordered two sheets and alas they did not package them well so a number of tiles ended up chipped or broken - but they more than made it right for me so I recommend giving them a call to see what other colors (other than #39 Burnt Umber) those glass squares come in) Hope this helps

Not sure why the first link isn't working. Here it is again: Bamboo Forest

Hey, anyone and everyone is welcome to come over and cook for me. :-) My problem is that I don't enjoy cooking and find it tedious to spend hours preparing a meal that is eaten in 20 minutes followed by another hour of cleanup and putting dishes away the next day. My least favorite chore is emptying the dishwasher because I'm short. While hubby does spend more time in the kitchen than I do (and he has always done all the grocery shopping), it's still really not cooking per say. It's frying an egg, fixing a salad or heating up something in the microwave. Because of our schedules (my long hours of work, his long hours on the tennis courts...sigh), we seldom see each other before 9pm on weeknights. The kids are both grown and on their own so it's just the two of us. I did manage to grow two healthy kids using my meager cooking skills, so all is not a total loss. :-) I think my biggest problem is that I have no desire to cook. I don't get all excited by the recipe sharing posts (in fact have never opened one) and spend so many hours either at the office or out hiking that fixing and eating a big meal just takes away too much time from my day. And ... to make matters worse, when we remodeled our kitchen three years ago (after being married 35 years), DH suggested we toss basically all of our dishes, cutlery, mixing bowls, etc. This meant we had to start all over just like newlyweds. Now who am I to argue with all new stuff but of course when we do want to make something in the kitchen we always find something else we forgot to replace. So, to wrap this discussion up, I can post a sign up sheet for anyone who would like to come to my house and cook. LOL Jodi-