Update: The cabinet install continues. I followed eandhl's advice, and laid out the stone samples on the cabs, with the "aged", darker wood samples on hand as well. Getting a good sample of the Brazilian dream was actually no mean feat, since the samples I've gotten previously were all merely chipped off corners of slabs, and were not even close to representative of the slab as a whole. A call to our fabricator to see if they had a remnant laying around led them to call the stone yard where we had reserved our slabs-- voila, we had a 2'x 2' sample that we could borrow. That said, the sample still wasn't 100% similar to our slabs-- ours had more white and red veining in it, but the orange/brown minor veining was comparable. It was really helpful for me to see the bigger sample with the cabinets. And the verdict: It looked great with both the current wood and the older samples, but I think I agree with those of you who suggested it would be a bit much. All the movement definitely becomes the star attraction (and perhaps would do so even more with our slab, with more strident coloring and veining), to the detriment of the cabinets. I'm not sure these pics really give that sense, but here they are anyway, with a seafoam green sample pic also. We love the Brazilian dream--great colors, movement, and there's a slight iridescent depth to it in a lot of places (unfortunately, you can't see this in the pics). The veining feels very marble-y to me, which I really like (the SO had nixed the idea of marble early on). The seafoam green just feels a bit more grounding to us. And we like the satin finish better (or rainwash--can't remember now, nor am I certain they're different...). So, barring a change of heart when we come back tomorrow to start our move back from our temporary digs (landlords came back from overseas, and our project is, as we could have expected, running a bit long), I think we will be going with the seafoam green. Couple of other tidbits I learned today: 1. Brazilian dream also goes by the name Nacarado. You can find a lot more from the Google using the latter than you can with the former. I stopped by another stone yard while on my quest for the mother of all samples-- this was the place that had previously labeled this stone "Van Gogh." This had confused me, since the web seems to associate "Van Gogh" with a stone that also goes by "Luisa blue" or something like that--totally different (though spectacular, in a bright blue, very colorful kind of way). Nacarado/Brazilian dream is apparently a quartzite, not a granite. One of the websites I saw, from a stone peddler called ARC, says this: "Nacarado is a smooth creamy amber colored quartzite, with delicate fine brownish gold veining. Some lots of Nacarado extracted from the top portions of the quarry may present heavy rust color resulting from infiltration of iron oxide. ARC opts to stock only the cleanest Nacarado available on the market, which is quarried deep in the bedrock, with minimum rust coloring." And indeed, the pic of their slab is a fairly uniform "creamy amber," without any of the red, white, orange/brown, which is actually what drew me to it in the first place. Interesting stone. 2. The guy who's installing our cabs drew my attention to how variable the appearance of sapele is in different light, and from different angles. Indeed, here are 2 pics of our older sapele samples, with both of them rotated about 180 degrees in the second pic. Same light, same camera settings. Interesting wood. That's all for now. Gotta get back to packing. I'll post pics under a new thread once we're further along. (Next week: cab install completed, stone templated, floors refinished, painting, maybe some backsplash tiling.)

Although you will want to start putting stuff away, resist the temptation until all work that could cause dust, including drilling for knobs and pulls, is done. (Not sure if you have a walk in pantry or pantry cab.) You will have a plywood topped cabinet pretty soon, so you can leave stuff on top of the cabs if you want, but again, beware of the dust. Expect that the installer will work for 5 full days, or more, to do it right -- make sure that everything fits nicely, cut trim & filler pieces as needed on site, etc. Expect to feel huge joy & relief because it means you are more than halfway through the project! Expect to post pix so we can check it out :)

So, dear husband was there this morning and when the GC arrived, said to him "Gee, this wasn't how we expected it would be." Long story short, they took out the tape measure and measured everything on that wall. When they measured the wall itself from the right hand corner to the left side where that wall ends, they found that the crew had framed it an inch longer than the dimension in the plans. (Thus making for the 1 inch that they had to add the left-hand spacer for. :-) (Big sigh. This is what is killing me in this whole process. The whole kitchen had been gutted, so these are brand, spanking new walls. Not a case of trying to fit the cabinets into existing walls and blaming the walls. And the KD came out and remeasured after the gutting before finalizing the cabinet order. So there is no logical reason why the crew shouldn't have framed to the dimensions in her drawings. At every milestone - before the blueboard, before the plastering - we asked the GC "are you sure this fridge space is right?" Ok, I'm venting, and I suppose this is a rhetorical question: do I have to pull out a tape measure every day and confirm that they are building to the drawings? Yes! How tedious!) Soooo, once they saw that they had not built the wall to the plans, they took down that area and re-adjusted it so that it matches the drawings. :-) Which means that while there are going to be the 3/4 inch wide places on either side of the above-fridge cabinet for those two panels on either side, at least they are matching 3/4 inch wide places. And it matches the drawings (which is somehow comforting to my left-side-oriented brain). Bless you all GWers, because I would have been much more panicked today without having you to 'talk' with. If I ever have the stamina for another kitchen reno (way way into the future from now), I'm going to make it a GW-designed kitchen. You are the best! --Lee

Plllog, I had that very notion going on Kitchens lol! Divotdiva, that's a big reason I'm getting the Bosch. I was at my SIL's and said something about running the DW, and she said "it's running now." I was standing right in the kitchen and couldn't hear it. g5spark, that's a good question. The place I'm getting it from is a huge appliance dealer so hopefully they are prepared for common modifications. I just looked and I think it just be hard-wired. Nothing is plugged in to the outlet under the sink, the disposal is hard-wired, and I can't see the DW wiring, must be under or behind.