Hi Nursetammi, I went to check out some granite slabs on Friday and decided on the New Venetian Gold. I loved the slabs. It has lots of garnet specks in it which looks good with my cabinets. It also has black in it to tie in with the black island I'm going to get made. It was very confusing because they didn't have Giallo Napoleon and the New Venetian Gold sample that I received from another granite place looked nothing like the New Venetian Gold that I picked out. I would have thought maybe it could have passed for Santa Cecilia, but they had that color there and it wasn't the same as the sample that I received either. I'm glad I wasn't set on one color. Lesson learned is that the color you pick might not be the color you think it is at the warehouse. The guy at the warehouse showed me some other New Venetian Gold slabs that were from a different lot than the one that I picked and it looked way different. It wasn't as gold and it had more grey. Anyway, I'm probably about a month away from getting my granite because the kitchen island is currently being made. I will post pictures when I'm done. Please post pictures of your project when you are done -- I'd love to see it. Good luck!

April - thank you!!! Zeek is a caique. My other three birds are conures, though. Parrots are a lot of work. THey are flock animals and really should not be locked up in a cage. THey are very social. The caique, especially, will get very angry at me if he doesn't get enough time out of the cage and can bite very badly. I can't get mad at him because this isn't the life he was evolved to live. He is supposed to be flying free in the wild with a mate and his buddies, raising babies, navigating the jungle, foraging for food....not cooped up in a cage in a house with walls and a ceiling. THey are also very loud messy animals. They will call constantly for me if they know I am home because they want to be out with me. Yesterday, I had to pretend I was leaving the house - slamming the front door, saying good bye, and then tip toeing to my room just for some peace so I could take a nap. They are extremely intelligent, social animals and long lived. My tiniest conure is the size of a parakeet, yet he will live 25+ years. My caique will live 35+ years. I honestly think it should be illegal to keep parrots as pets. They have not been bred to be pets and are essentially still wild animals. They live so long that many are rehomed numerous times. If you do decide to get one, I would recommend getting a bird from a rescue or off craigslist. Do NOT get a caique. They are as much work as a 2yr. Old. Two of my conures came from bad neglectful homes and are just the sweetest little birds. If you think you can provide a good home with a couple hours a day out of cage time, then it would be great if you could rescue one. I swear my two are grateful for properly being taken care of. Anyway, sorry for the rant! :).

With median new construction costs ranging from $100-150 sq ft, your 4500 sq-ft house had a minimum cost of $500k-$750k and could be much higher if you live in a high cost area. $2k is less than 0.5% of cost. It is unfortunate that you can’t absorb this small delta to get what you want. However, I remember how tight our finances were in some of our home purchases, especially our first one when I was fresh out of a post-doc position and had very little cushion saved after living as poor graduate students for 5 years. Good luck Stacy. By the way, we went we polo blue Elmwood cabinets in our island. But our cabinetry budget was more than 2x.

I've seen a dark lilac kitchen in a house that I was really taken with (was country style kitchen) But as I was a guest there..it'd be inappropriate to take pics.. still remember it though. With affection:) Dark lilac is not navy of course-my point is, depending on a space, particular layout, size, light kitchen gets, house style, and your own aesthetic-everything has a potential to look darn good. Any color. Their kitchen had this slightly distessed look..probably helped with hiding imperfections Dings in my own kitchen drive me crazy, and it's a light color, not dark Depends on how is used too I suppose...some are very light on things, whatever they do, some(I won't name them but it is my husband) are like Terminators.. consider how you/your family lives, well to the best of what can be guessed in advance