Thynes! Thanks so much for giving me the exact name and number for your tile. I had seen your expanded kitchen post and couldn't find the exact tile. You have such a lovely kitchen, so warm and welcoming and the tile really makes a statement. I also see they only have one USA distributor. Your tile in your kitchen looks totally different than on the website..were you able to get a sample or see the tile in a store? I've sent Saltillo an email as well..so we shall see. Thanks again for the information. This post was edited by harleysbud on Sun, Mar 31, 13 at 15:25

I think the granite looks great: very classic and a big improvement over the tile! I'd definitely look into undercabinet lights. Before, the white counters reflected the ceiling light back up under the cabinets. The dark granite holds onto the light and makes the undercabinet areas a little cave-like. Lighting will make a big difference. I think the previous suggestions are excellent: painting the wall in the kitchen, along with finding some colorful accessories. I had a small galley kitchen similar to this one, and I was amazed at the difference a bright blue rag rug and a few blue dishtowels over the stove handle made.

Here are a some pics and my dilemma. Keep in mind this is my old fridge...new one comes today! Here is how we ended up with this: I have never had an enclosed fridge so didn't think about the peninsula dying into panels or how deep panels were going to be. I "semi" designed the new footprint and took it to Lowe's where the KD took over. (yes---I know......) Bought Schuler plywood with maple fronts cabinets. Although the kitchen designer had the model number of the fridge we were buying, which is a full-size, she designed the kitchen with 24" deep panels. She knew I was trying to have the look of an enclosed fridge. Being that I've never had an enclosed fridge, it was something I just didn't think of until the install started. Evidently she put a counter-depth in the design program because the elevation sketches she gave me showed an enclosed fridge. "Luckily" the panels actually came in wrong and were cut at only 23" for some strange reason and the installer caught it right away when looking over everything. Otherwise he probably would have installed them and I would be stuck. So called Lowe's to reorder the panels and somehow in all this it suddenly dawned on me that a full size fridge was going to be deeper and require deeper panels. I thought "no problem! Yay I can order them at 30!" By this time the KD had quit her job due to the pandemic. The other KD didn't know what was going on so we called in the Schuler rep. She was the one who immediately told me that those 30" panels would be sticking out in front of the peninsula. She asked if we could move the peninsula forward since the other side is an overhang for seating, but we couldn't since it would bottleneck the entrance into the kitchen down to under 36" and getting rid of an existing bottleneck was one of the reasons for the re-design to start with. So we had a dilemma. We cannot go down to a counter depth fridge which was the other option. What I decided was to split the difference and order 27" refrigerator panels. The fridge without doors is 29.5" so I will have about 3" of the side of the fridge sticking out which I don't like, but while I want my kitchen to look beautiful, I value the functionality too. The old fridge that you see in the pic sticks out a total of 32" The new fridge will stick out 34 with doors but without handles (4.5" of that is doors that would stick out anyway) Here's the really complicated part....we will be installing decorative panels on the end of the fridge as we have them on all the cabinets. This is how you enter the kitchen and I don't want that big blank space there next to the peninsula. The panels should be installed with just 1/4" reveal. I posted a photo below of how the panels look that are already installed on the side of the pantry that adjoins to a 17" high window seat. Luckily those face the opposite way from the fridge panels so you will never see both at the same time. I also posted photos of us holding up panels on the side of the fridge (they are NOT the right size panels...we have to order those still---we just used these to look at the right edge as to how wide to make the panels.) Also keep in mind we can remove the quartz backsplash piece if that would look better. That was not originally planned...the panels were going to sit directly on top of the countertop. So do we order the panels with just the 1/4" reveal to match the panels in the rest of the kitchen? Or, as the Schuler rep recommended, order the panels so they are the same width with the countertop, leaving about 1 3/4" reveal on the right side, but then your eye follows the countertop all the way up. I asked the countertop templater guy if I should just lengthen the overhang on the kitchen side of the peninsula to 2.5" to bring it out to within 1/4" of the fridge panel but he said no....I'm now thinking I should have insisted on it. Especially since we have full overlay cabinets that already make the overlay look very small since the 1.5" planned overhang is measured from the box, not the front of the drawers. Note how small the overhang looks to the drawers. And then of course, they had templated for a 1.5" overhang and I only got 1.25" UGH! Every quarter inch there would have made the reveal on the side of the fridge less. Suggestions appreciated! I'm hoping that I will eventually make peace in my mind with this issue and won't notice it but it is driving me crazy right now. I think of all the things that screwed up just because of this one error by the KD that I didn't catch and I am beating myself up for it!

Then there is this article - that had me leaning toward quartzite ... http://usenaturalstone.org/definitive-guide-quartzite/ The Houzz article above has me leaning towards Quartz. : ) I am of the opinion that that are good features in both. Quartzite can take heat and you cannot set a hot pot on Quartz. Quartz does not stain as bad as Quartzite since Quartzite is a natural stone. Quartzite has to be sealed. I don't think Quartz does. I am thinking it is a toss up The one thing I am worried about is the part about the citrus and etching Quartz I have read a lot about. I use lemons a lot and we all cook around our island so I don't have full control of watching it all the time. . I would love to hear opinions from folks who have either. Have you had any issues with either choice?