A mood board is a great idea. Force yourself to prioritize. What is the one piece you really don't want to give up. I'm betting its the stove. (That would be mine! That stove is to die for!) So make everything work with that. On my monitor I hadn't seen pink in the granite. Now knowing that, I'd say the cherry color in the cabinet wood is just fine with the granite you chose. Is the color of the stove also present in the granite slab? If it is, you are good. its really hard to judge color from a photo posted online, so here's one 'rule' that may help you focus in on what you -may- want to consider changing. If the color, or any shade of that color is in your granite slab, you can use it in the room. An exact match is not interesting or necessary. Second, you usually want a dominant tome and then other colors you bring out of that slab will be accents, so you won't use so much of them. Now, there are a million caveats to that, and of course, breaking the rules can bring fantastically stunning drama, but I think if you start with that one rule as a starting place, your own vision will begin to materialize. Whatever feels good to you will work. Just keep at it until it gels for you. With all the ideas coming from folks here and what you can see because you're looking directly at the different colors and where they will be in relation to each other, and considering the light in the room, it will begin to come together and you'll get a feel for where you will or won't want to challenge color 'rules'. I should say all of the above goes out the window if you're going for a monochromatic look. LOL BTW, I love my miele vacuum and I didn't even know they make dishwashers, but I can wax poetic about my bosch dishwasher. In addition to how well it functions, I'm very sensitive to background noise and its sooo quiet. Since its the way your faucet will stay where you aim it that really attracts you to it, maybe look at upscale stylized commercial configurations. I don't have any experience to draw on, its just a thought.

I picked new slabs! Thanks everyone who told me to listen to my inner voice. My inner voice told me I had to lug my sick kids to Bucks County to commune with my slabs. Spend a little time with them to make sure I LOVED them. I didn't. Too wild. Too green. But not too soft. So I picked new slabs that I think I WILL love. [IMG]http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n276/jmcknigh/soapstone/newslab2.jpg[/IMG] The funny thing is that I stuck with Santa Rita Venata. I think I can live with the softness. And I still get veining, but with a darker, more consistent background. I'm excited about my long-coveted soapstone now, not anxious about it. Now let's just hope I don't get a 20 inch crack. So my personal advice to those picking soapstone slabs (and this has all probably been said before) is to 1) pay attention to the background of the stone. I was too interested in the veining patterns, and didn't notice that my original slabs had a quartzy, translucent quality that I personally don't care for and 2) If you plan to oil your stone, do not pick a slab without seeing at least part of it oiled. My original slabs were even more dramatic when oiled, and I noticed a lot of things I didn't notice the when they were just wet. I know the stone will calm down a lot (especially the greenness) with subsequent oilings, but that oiling really made me sure I wanted a different stone. 3) If you live close enough to the stoneyard to make this possible, take a picture of the slab, take it home and photoshop the approximate countershapes with it. This really helped me get an idea of what the veining was going to look like on my counters. While I'm really attracted to whole slabs that are geologically interesting, when I photoshopped them onto my counters, they were just too much. Witness what I refer to as the "ganglion". [IMG]http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n276/jmcknigh/soapstone/oldslabganglioin.jpg[/IMG] While cool too look at on a slab, not exactly the look I was going for in my kitchen. FYI, those slabs might still be available for anyone who IS going for this look. Just not me. Again, thanks everyone for the sage advice about following my instincts. Now on to picking a backsplash....

Thanks architect! Love that design. I considered a similar layout, but decided to go a different route. Mostly because moving the fireplace down the wall would result in 8-9' of cabinetry on one side. Maybe it would have looked ok, but I wasn't sold on that piece being so LONG. So unfortunately, at this point, fp stays. Womp, womp. Do you have thoughts on where the shelving should stop in relation to the mantel? Does just below seem odd to you? Will cutting the 10' tall wall exactly in half look off?

Agree with Cynthia that Scepter'd Isle is very tall as own-root .. I gave it away due to its being 5 feet tall in its 1st year (gallon-size). Steve: With regard to what you wrote: "I am planning to leave the pots outside in the winter. I know it's not ideal, but it's the situation I have to deal with for now. I just threw out my 1-year-old Zephirine Drouhin rose after deciding it wasn't coming back to life. It was too happy in the mild early winter we had, and it leafed back out in January. A couple of freezes put a stop to that, and the plant never recovered. It never even got below 10F as far as I know. ZD "should" be hardy to much colder temperatures, but I guess it just hit the plant at the wrong time." That's what happened in my zone 5a this past winter: In Feb., it dipped down to -20 F but roses still had green cane (at least one foot of green cane on Dee-lish, Princess Charlene de Monaco, and Sweet Mademoiselle). Then we had tons of freezing rain mid-March, and the above died down to 1/2 foot of green cane, and those that start out with 3 inch. of green cane end of Feb, became dead in mid-March. My Zeph. Drouhin is 8th-year own root, and it WAS NOT affected by freezing rain in March since it's planted on a steep hill (water drains down fast), plus I buried it below 5 inch. of rock-hard clay which protected the crown from the acidic & freezing rain. Now on May 5, Zeph is green to the tip (4 feet) with zero dead branches. Today I pulled out a rooting which was exposed to freezing rain in April (tons of rain, then temp dropped to 20 F). The upper cane is green, but near the root turned black, so I threw that rooting away. The potting soil inside was dense and slowed down the drainage despite tons of holes drilled at bottom of pot. I should had made that potting soil drains faster by mixing in gypsum prior to planting that tiny rooting. I contemplate storing pots outside in my zone 5a, and some ways to buffer against tons of freezing rain in March & April which corrode the root (NOT by extreme cold, but by tons of acidic rain that freezes and crack the crown). 1) Fast drainage, such as air-pots or elevated on bricks. 2) Piling up bags of soil into a tall wall around pots (on sale for 1/2 price in late fall). That's to insulate -20 F temp in Feb. in my zone 5a. 3) Pile up alkaline horse manure (pH 8) or wood chips on top of roses to buffer against the acidic rain (pH 4.5) here in Chicagoland. 4) Cover roses with 2 double-layered Yard-Waste bags (one inside another) which help some rain to float out, rather than sinking down to corrode roots, or crack roots when temp. drops. In late March, after that freezing rain, I asked husband to burn a big pile of branches. He was annoyed since I piled up pruned perennials & tomato branches on top of rose branches in a tall heap (2 feet tall). At the bottom of the heap, I found roses' canes still green from last pruning in late November. The freezing rain did not turn those green canes black, since they were buffered by a heap of of branches on top, same with the own-roots which I put plastic pots around (bottom cut off), then piled up wood chips inside up to 1 foot. The wood-chips (up to 1 foot high) prevented fluctuation of temp which cracked roots, or freezing & acidic rain that turned canes black.