I would suggest thinking about adding in green in a major way. Blues and greens are soothing pool-ey, garden-ey colors that work very very well together. Ceasarstone Apple Martini Tropical Green Granite Marinace Green Granite Rainforest Green Marble Jurrassic Green Granite Wild West Green Granite Marina Green Granite For a real life pool house remodel..... This St. Louis poolhouse kitchen was the 2011 Kitchen of the Year. It uses a blues and greens as it's base, but punches it up with strong terra cottas and yellows. Here is a link that might be useful: Kitchen of the Year: Pooled Together

Ppbenn, the wallpaper is "peonies" from tempaper. It is not standard wallpaper. Its a self-adhesive wallpaper, aka a giant sticker. I don't know how it would take water color bc of the finish. But, Tempaper sells a product that is plain that you can decorate. So maybe? Tempaper has a website with faqs, and they would likely answer questions too. It's a sm company/neat story. Good luck! I am sure my kids will paint ours soon. I've already wiped up pen and pencil. Marker and paint are likely not far behind. Fwiw: hanging this is just slightly different than regular paper. The back is very sticky. That is great if your flat walls meet crisp edges of the even/level ceiling. With my old wavy plaster walls and old wavy plaster ceiling, covered in tons of paint, a standard wallpaper likely would have been easier to hang because it would have been more forgiving to stretch, move and slide. But, this paper was worth the effort. And removal will be so much easier, though I have no plans to do it anytime soon. Fori! I remember you asked questions about the smeg. I hoped you would pull the trigger before me! I will try to remember to post a more thorough review after we use the speed oven more. I want to try to bake, heat a frozen pizza, and grill fish or meat. Then I'll post again. In the meantime, as I mentioned above, we have abused the oven feature on the smeg everyday for more than a month: reheat french toast, warm left overs, cook chicken fingers, spring rolls, eggplant parm, roast veggies and chicken, make nacho chips and cheese. It just gets hot so much faster than my 30" Berta gas range, which isn't particularly slow to get hot. And I think/hope it has to be more efficient to use the small electric oven than the larger gas oven. (?) And the mw is in use everyday, reheating my coffee, cooking frozen broccoli etc. The mw performs well, as I would expect. We have not baked, used the grill function, or done any speed/combo cooking. But to be honest, the combo features were secondary. I am not very good at following directions and I usually never use the pre-set options on anything! If and when I bake, it's usually in batches; I imagine I would usually use the range to bake and the smeg to cook dinner. I will use the grill function; hope it works well. We decided to take the leap, or be the guinea pigs, bc we only had so many spots to put a mw. The best spot was prime real estate, below the counter. To give up cabinet drawers, I wanted an appliance that would do more than mw. I cook, a lot, everyday and on holidays. A second oven was really attractive. Obviously I didn't have space for a wall oven. I don't even have space for a countertop convection or toaster oven. So we looked at combos. Since I only have 24" my choices were limited. The reviews on the Miele were really good. But it didn't sound like $$$$ better for how I would use the appliance. And I didn't have that extra $$$$ to just get the Miele bc it's the Miele. Really, my biggest concern: yes, my kids play with the knobs. But i can't blame them. It is cute.

Problem with quartz is that industry is not telling the truth. Quartz is hardest material, harder than granite but the so called quartz slabs are not pure quartz, most of the quartz slabs has less than 60% quartz rest is all sort of industrial waste like granite/marble powder from quarry, glass and concrete and biggest culprit is the resin. Most manufacture states percentage of quartz vs resin by weight, this is just the marketing tactics, stone is heavier than plastic resin, if you look at volume most slab has 15-30% resin. Resin is biggest culprit when it comes to quartz staining and dull marks, resin is very soft material and it reacts with any household product like lemon juice, vinegar, wine, soap, tomato juice etc. and when you spill any kind of acidic/alkaline on quartz it creates etch mark, which looks like stain but it is a chemical reaction with resin, which you cannot get out unless you re-polish surface by professional guy. Even regular use abrasive object like magic eraser, or scotchbrite will create a dull mark when you rub quartz countertop with it for cleaning, it is cutting though soft resin and destroying fine finish. Quartz need to be treated like a baby, it is good for display in galley but not for daily use in kitchen. Egypt pyramid has granite which has withstand 3000-4000 year of abuse but todays quartz cannot withstand normal use and tear of daily kitchen activity. I made mistake of installing quartz, but I will never go back to quartz natural stone/granite is best option for me.

Anyone who has put the Calacatta Vicenza, any regrets? I’m leaning towards that for my kitchen but I want my counter tops to be mostly white with just little specks of gray here and there. In some pictures I find Kitchens who have huge chunks of gray and very busy. Any opinions? I was also thinking about cashmere Carrara? Any help is appreciated