Hmmm, I suspect a bit of procrastination is evident here; either in putting off the project, or putting off learning how to care for the plants. Neither your teacher nor Nature is going to like that - the teacher may flunk you, but as you are finding out, Nature is less forgiving and gets rid of failures whether it's the plant's fault or not. Meanawhile, you have a problem because A) it takes time for noticeable differences in growth/coloring to be apparent to the casual eye and B) most houseplants are sturdy enough to tolerate mistreatment such as soil variation for literally months before you can see a difference (or else they are so tender that death will take place due to wrong temperatures, poor light conditions, or improper moisture long before they can react to different sorts of soil). See if your teacher will accept a report on how soil variances affect the seed sprouting and young growth. Lettuce will sprout quickly and grow rapidly -- and the seed should be available at your local stores; I'd suggest using a leaf lettuce such as Black-seeded Simpson. Get all your samples of soil (and label them when you get them), and let them get up to room temperature. Buy a pack of 1-oz paper cups and label 6 cups to match each soil label. use a pin to poke a hole in the bottom of each cup. Be sure the soil is moist but not wet -- stick your finger in: if you feel dampness that's good; mud is bad; dry as dust is very bad. Fill each little cup with the matching soil and tap the top with one finger [you'll probably tap the soil down and need to add more]; then put 2 or 3 seeds on top of the soil. Now sprinkle more soil to cover the seeds - this is a guessing game... just guess how much will put another 1/8" soil over the seeds. Next each pot should be sprinkled with enough water to dampen the top of the soil -- fill a clean windex bottle with warm water and mist! Now put the pots on a tray or paper plate, cover the whole plate with a transparent cling wrap, and put it onto the top of your water heater or a similar place where they can be warm but not cooked. A sunny windowsill is good -- if the sill itself is warm: put your hand on the sill for a couple minutes to feel the temperature: if your fingers get cold, any seeds will shiver instead of sprouting. Prepare your report form now: describe the soil types; note the date seeds were planted. Every day you will need to check the soil to be sure the soil's surface is moist (carefully - don't poke the seeds). In about a week, the seeds should start sprouting: remove the cling wrap (it helps keep the seeds moist but it will hurt the sprouts) and then note when each seedling came up; what color the leaves are, and use a ruler to measure how much growth occurred since the previous day. The seedlings will need sunshine (and at this time of year, several hours of additional light from a lamp) in order to grow. Every day or two, you will need to water very deeply - that means get the soil really wet! or else the sprouts will flop over and die of thirst. Within 2 weeks you should have enough information to determine how much, if any, difference was apparent between the plants. If you study up a bit, you might be able to determine whether the difference was caused by soil type (clay, sandy) or by nutrients (was one soil more loamy than another). Oh, and if you want, - after you write your report - you can make a salad out of the subject. Good luck, and let us know what happens.

I don't know if you saw on previous threads so please forgive if I'm being redundant. I tried a oil finish and quite frankly... I didn't think the wood is nice enough looking and it just didnt' do it for me. I'm most definitely not a matchy type person. Here's what it looked like: IN my galley layout the baking table will kinda be offset from the rest of the kitchen. I expect to have nutmegish light brown kinda stain on my cabs. Maybe maple, maybe QS oak, would consider bamboo, but you get the idea as to color. I even love red birch but don't really want to introduce orangey tones in my wood.

Hi everyone, another update, hopefully a near-to-final one: we declined the contractor's offer to draft a different plan. In truth, I'm reasonably okay with our current plan; he was suggesting that he could redo our entire HVAC system in order to utilize our utility room for more kitchen space. While I understand the rationale (our kitchen is a narrow galley that is also a walkway from the front half of the house to the back half of the house) it honestly wouldn't give me a lot "better" space than the plan that I'd devised with a lot of feedback on GW earlier (under my original user name, I'm holding off on referencing that simply because the saga with this contractor is not quite over yet.) In any case, the contractor seemed totally OK with our decision. In fact, he spent a couple of hours here on Monday, along with his electrician and the KD from the cabinet shop. Last week his foreman and HVAC guy had been here. And then he sent his draftsman today to do measurements and preliminary sketches for opening up a load-bearing wall, which will require permits. The KD tweaked the design some and I'm actually very happy with the outcome. I left for work thinking I had overreacted before, probably because this has been an obsession for quite a while, and that I was only a couple months away from having a really decent kitchen. And then: the contractor emailed today saying he had some "medical issues" arise and he did not feel he could complete the project. He sent a release for us to sign that dissolves the original contract and indicated that he will return our deposit within 24 hours of receipt of the signed release. On many levels, this is not my preferred outcome - I was already imagining having a post-renovation party, since I've been too embarrassed by the state of our kitchen to entertain lately - but as most of you indicated, this was a really bizarre and worrisome situation. Anyway, fingers crossed, this appears to be on its way to resolving itself in the most secure possible fashion. I think we will probably wait until the spring to actually do the main work on the kitchen - obviously we want to take our time and feel fully confident in any future contractors. We'll probably do some pieces of the needed work in the interim, such as the electrical panel upgrade, but my husband is adamantly opposed to ripping out the kitchen in cold weather. I do like the KD at the cabinet shop, and the line of cabinets they were recommending, so I'll try to maintain that relationship. They have been very considerate of me as I've shared the drama on this and indicated they work regularly with other contractors. LWO, I appreciate your comments, and I may even post the general idea for feedback here; there are some really helpful folks who weighed in on previous iterations posted here under my regular user name. I have to admit, I'm a little hesitant because while I admire so many kitchens I see here, the context varies so dramatically from my very high cost, small space area. But I'm hugely grateful for all the moral support and sensible advice you all offered here on this drama, and hopefully I can post in another couple days saying that it's totally, firmly, finally over with this contractor. It feels like it has been a roller coaster, and I'm ready to get off. As my husband consoled me, this only means I can spend another few months oogling kitchen magazines and playing with my own ideas. And reading GW of course. Thanks again everyone!

I don't think the wall and floor grout need to match at all, but I do think they need to be in the same color family. So for example I wouldn't do beige on the floor and grey on the walls.