thank you everyone. i can't wait to see it installed either!! redlover - i'm happy to share details about our house. it's our whole family's favorite topic. haha if i'm not sharing what you were interested in, please feel free to ask away of even shoot me an email. we're actually building 2 homes - our main house and what we've dubbed the "guest house" but really it's an inlaw home for my parents as my mom watches the kids full time now. before we relocated we lived next door to one another as well so that's not a new experiment for us - we're close! both homes are 1-story which IS new for us, and we're on 1 acre in a gated community somewhat in the country now but the area is starting to boom, and we're in the greater DFW area in texas. our house is completely custom --imagined in my head (or on my computer screen) and then put onto paper. i'm not an architect or in the trade, but i messed and messed and messed with it for about a year until we got it where i wanted it. i handed it over to our builder, and his design firm just took my rough plans and converted them to blue prints! now it's absolutely amazing to see our vision being constructed in 3D around us. our home is 4 bed, 4 bath (each kid has their own bathroom which was a major point of debate, but if it makes us any less obnoxious, their bathrooms are tiny). our builder dubbed the style "French Eclectic" for the exterior elevation, which needed a description for the HOA, and that made me laugh and we stuck with it. interior, i told my builder NOT to assume any one particular style. so architectural purists will hate our home! that's ok. we built our last house, and we were young and inexperienced in terms of home ownership in general. the house was beautiful, but it looked very much out of a catalog, which is nice in a way, but it never felt cozy. it was too precise or calculated or something. i'm SO really striving for that loved, lived-in feeling in this house. i'm incorporating a lot of upcycled furniture and antiques and trying to blend my love for cool colors with the coziness of an old home that could have been lived in for a hundred years. i love the industrial style, rustic, coastal cottage, hollywood glitz and everything in between and there'll probably be touches of all of it. we're also trying to blend our love of space with our appreciation for coziness. from the small front entry you walk into the open concept main living area with living room, kitchen, dining. (no formal rooms anywhere in our house). the two main features as you enter are the floor to ceiling stone fireplace flanked by windows and the big window above our kitchen sink. we're actually shipping in fieldstone from boston for our fireplace as we love the look and love that it'll look like home. we're doing a coffered ceiling with white beams in that entire space. from the kitchen there's a door to a covered patio with a vaulted ceiling and an outdoor fireplace. There are 2 hallways leading off opposite sides of that "great room". one leads to the bedroom side of the house. The laundry room is centralized with the bedrooms where the laundry happens. there's also a built-in homework nook in the hallway for the kids as they get older. a quiet place away from the tv, but not so private that i can't keep an eye on them without looking neurotic. :) The other hallway leads to the "dirty" area of the house. the dirty area has tile flooring instead of hardwood! my hobby room (which has a 12x6 storage room off of it for large storage since we're used to basements back in the northeast and don't have that luxury in texas!)... the mudroom off the garage, the back door to the future pool, a play room for the kids... all on the dirty side of the house. also the guest bedroom and guest bathroom are off that hallway [not that i expect the guests to be messy! :) - we've just found it's nice to have the guest room separate from the rest of the bedrooms for more privacy] also off the great room is a home office with french doors. hubby and i both work from home. here are a couple exterior shots of what our builder calls "French eclectic" but i call "happy french gnome"... in this first one you can see my parents house to the back right of our house. closer shot of ours - i'd apologize for all the trucks in the shot, but i'm thrilled they're always there working!! you can see all our progress on my blog if you're interested in the trials and tribulations. haha link below. Here is a link that might be useful: My Blog - A Nugget and a Doodle

You all are so sweet, and I appreciate all the compliments, especially today. I'm in a terrible funk because I just found out that a heating problem will necessitate removing my downstairs bedroom hardwood floor. Between that and the unending kitchen remodel, I'm about to tear my hair out. Please keep me posted if any of you buy Welbeck Tiles. I have about 35 plain ones left over (I must be an idiot when it comes to math), so I am thinking of buying a few more and tiling the tiny laundry area room counter. Evilbunnie (the world's best name!)--yes it's cork tile on the floor. I didn't go with durodesign, but I do love theirs too. It's Globus Cork--maple (www.corkfloor.com). Because of the terrible unevenness of my cement floors, I had to use "peel and stick" cork tiles (actually, they are pre-glued and then you put more adhesive down during installation). But here's the best part of Globus. They make these very interesting patterns--you design them and they come pre-made in strips so you don't have to put down all the little tiny pieces individually. I've taken a picture of the "breakfast nook" area of my kitchen where I put in a border. Besides loving the aethestics (even the heating and cooling guy who came to my house today told me how much he loved the floor), it's super comfortable to stand on and it is great insulation from the cold cement slab. I don't know how it will wear over time, but so far so good.

I'm not sure how I came across this post, I think it was displayed on the right side and I clicked on it being intrigued by the tile making. I was at one time interested in working with papercrete and hypertufa. But after enlisting my brother, who wasn't as enthusiastic, and my niece, who poured cement down my laundry room sink, which original to the house had lasted 70 years, and ruining three blenders, my interest waned. True to form, if I come upon difficulty in a project, I think of it as a sign for me not to continue. And really, after all these years of trying various crafts that result in crap, I should know better. I also should have known better than to ask my brother, who always says it can't be done to any of my unique design ideas. And I should have known better than to ask my niece, who once stayed up all night before having to drive to LA for an art show, cutting mat after mat after measuring once, twice, sometimes ten times, but always coming out with the wrong size. I think we both have math dyslexia. I should video us trying anything crafty to see where we go wrong. I think both of us having ADHD might have something to do with it. Sorry for the backstory and run on sentences. So, I just wanted to see if you continued with your venture. And to say sorry for whatever tragedy occurred to cause you to have to move to Florida. Not that there is anything wrong with Florida, but it isn't Panama. Which is one of my favorite places in the western hemisphere. I hope no one is upset that I brought up a seven year old post.

Have you considered wallpaper? You can bring in color, as well as a design, if that's your 'schtick'. Just throwing another consideration in the mix. I personally *hate* a backsplast covered in tile or granite from countertop to bottom of cabinets, or even further up. I've gone *about* 3/4 up the wall, with the remained just the neutral color thruout the rest of my home, but only on the interior cabs, so above the stove and sink areas. On the perimeter bank of cabinets, it's just a painted wall, where I had planned to use wallpaper, but haven't done so yet. I also picked up at an auction a painted canvass, which is long and narrow, and thought of using it here. It's a vintage French scene of a girl feeding chickens in a barn, done in dark colors, which is my preference. I just don't want to leave it should I sell. ;)