I am a fabricator. I have been following this thread with interest and find it contains a lot of disinformation and skewed perspectives. Over half my business is high end homes where money is often not a consideration and interior designers are common. Natural stone is still the preferred material for the majority of the work we do even though we provide a wide variety of engineered surfaces includes the various quarts brands and the new materials like Dekton. The quartz products are rapidly losing the panache they enjoyed for years as the new alternative to natural stone. This change has been exacerbated by the emergence of discount brands and discounting among the big suppliers as they fight for market share. Granite has changed in that "exotics" are much more prevalent and alternative finishes to the traditional polish are increasingly common. The buying public has also become more educated and recognizes the actual maintenance for natural stone is minimal unless the material is one of the alternates like marble or travertine which have inferior material properties. My advice to my customers is always to pick the "look" they want and make sure they understand the material properties. Marble is extraordinarily beautiful but it is only a little harder than jello, wicks up liquids like a sponge, and dissolves readily in common organic acids like acetic acid.

Beautiful Monomoy! Love your subway, very different! Ok so here are some updated pictures. Whole kitchen, iphone pic so I could fit it all (there is also a large pantry room to the right which I will post in the final reveal) and here are some clearer ones with my proper camera You can see the floor a bit better here and I think this is the tile we are going with (without the white bit at the bottom). It's a Mexican hand painted tile. This is the 2x8 size. Debating wether to go with 3x6 or this one? Thoughts? So we still kind of hate the floor, I think it's because I miss the warmth of wood. Seriously considering ripping it out and laying hardwood. I hope I grow to like it!!!

you're mentioning Montana and East Coast as some future locations I've never been to Montana..I haven't been to Arizona(if not to count Grand Canyon of course, twice)..I lived on East Coast though the things that come to mind-is how different the landscape might be. and light. because they're on different latitude..and many other things. thus, the relationship between a house standing say on East Coast and a house situated in Arizona might develop differently from the get go and it's important, that inside-outside relationship Different considerations will depend on house itself too. what year your house was built? seems to be nineties, or..? does it have an architectural style one can define, more or less? How the yard looks like? what do you see from your windows? Things and details and pallettes that work in houses X wouln't work same or with same success in houses Y. It's like..say, I'm not a tall blond. If I'd do everything to look like a tall blond it'd be epic fail. Even if I love tall blondes with all my heart. I need to work with what I've got here-small and dark:) okay I can dye my hair and choose wardrobe as the mood strikes, That's going with my loves. But my essense stays the same. Similat is the thing with the houses. You can-and should-do things that you love. But you have certain givens that you have to respect, or it won't be same house. You'd break its will. You never want to break anyone's will. You want to find a key to a successful relationship with them. A color-any color-is never a fad. A fad is more description of infatuation with a product, or combo of such, that many people become deeply infatuated with and then discard them fast, too fast even for a trend cycle. ( it seems the cycles started being shorter too..as I receive lots of silly emails from all sorts of design mags..what took them 10, then 5 years before now takes half a year to admire-and then denounce. It's amusing, really) you do describe gray as your love, not infatuation, and I easily believe you-I love greige/taupe for example, and I don't care whether it's everybody's love at the moment, or just mine but. I'll always care how and on what surface and in what proportion I should apply it, depending on a particular house. Its style, the light it gets, everything that house tries to tell me. If wood like tile-I'd look for more.. wood like tile. Something greige, warmer. As you've mentioned. woods are warmer in nature. Even the grayish of them all (well I don't know all the species the world has..but I've travelled to many)And yes it's hard to install to get it right. Or maybe a stone? If you're going with tile anyway? which brings me to stone painting. I think it'll look fake..at best. Stones are-for the most part-full of strong character. They don't like manipulating. They are what they are, maybe the most of all other materials. Can you work with your stone as is? It seems pretty neutral, the surface's not big. I don't think it'd love shiplap either next to it. (not that their mirror is the best choice..but shiplap would be, in certain sense, repeating that mirror) different sensibilities. One can try and be eclectic, I'm eclectic myself. But some things, they're ready to engage in dialogue. and some will not speak to each other. as somebody who really tried to redo a firepalce she hated(hated!) on a cheap..which wasn't that cheap.lol...it was a fail. I mean it's still better than it was. But some things, you try to do on a cheap. Then you realize you have to pay twice as much to still bring them to your vision. But you're already out of energy, and as for money, you need it for something else. Think hard what you want it to be and how much it will cost and whether justifies a result. Maybe art you absolutely love will bring you much more happiness. And art, you'll be able to take with you. Lastly, I admire you for being a good sport..and wish you luck with the purchase going smoothly, and with your new home. If one has opportunity to live there a bit figure out himself in the house, daily live and all-he has an advantage. As everybody has said. Don't give up that avantage if you can, use it. You'll know the house better, and you'll see what's worth changing, what works for you, etc. Or-change just one thing right now, the one that's the hardest to get to later...say you're dead set on changing flooring..find it, invest in it, redo it..see where and what you'd rather change next.

@Beth that first picture is exactly the amount of contrast I want. I’ve seen several photos of Pale Oak that look like that, but they all have better light than I do. Pale Oak is something I’m considering but I think it’s leaning pink in my rooms. I haven’t given up yet - I just put the chips up today and I need to watch it for a while longer to see if there really is pink showing up. Was the White Dove you painted over on your walls or trim? I’m in the “scared I made the wrong decision” stage of the remodel and am worried about the White Dove cabinets. It’s a LOT of White Dove so if it’s bad I’m sunk. But it was what seemed to look best against the counter sample. The trouble is that I had to pick it when the light was different from what it will be in the end. White Dress be has always been my go-to white in this house and has been beautiful but the light has changed a lot during the remodel so now I’m less sure. You are correct that I could easily change all the trim if I wanted to - I just don’t want it to look different from all the White Dove in the front of the house. Is Simply White what you would recommend I consider, or something else? I have about 30 chips of various colors up on the wainscoting now so I can see them all against White Dove. You can see them in the distance of the picture up top. I actually have three chips of every color taped together to make a bigger sample. I know this is WAY too many, but I’m having a lot of trouble figuring out which ones to rule out and which ones I like best so I don’t know how to start eliminating colors. I do have chips of Calm that are not up there but I will put them up. I don’t have Lacey pearl but I have a fan deck so I’ll check it tomorrow when it’s light. I do like that one - I don’t know how I missed it.