Very macho conversation guys, & all the numbers & decimal points are very impressive, especially to a math-challenged gal like me. Hey Stinky-gardener-- It has nothing to do with math, or trying to be impressive. If you go into a tile showroom, and ASK about how slippery any specific tile is, that is how they will be rated. If you want to understand what the salesman is trying to tell you, those are the numbers you will be dealing with. It's a rating system, not the quadratic equation. Claire-- I had a discussion with the VP of Laticrete about 2 weeks ago about those non-slip coatings, because he'd heard I'd recommended them to someone. He told me that they don't last, and that they end up making the tiles look pretty nasty, because they tend to catch the dirt in areas where there's not quite as much traffic, and then in the high traffic areas, it wears off, which means either stripping off the coating from the rest of the floor, or recoating right over what's there already, and you can imagine what that starts to look like after a while. I can't say one way or another from personal experience. But I trust this guy from Laticrete. He's seen a whole lot more tile situations than I have, from all over the world, and I've known him personally all my life (our families were close), so I know he wouldn't steer me wrong.

Are you sure Lowe's doesn't have records? (I guess so if you said as much.) A couple years back we needed to order carpet to match what used to be on a display, but it was no longer displayed. The guy looked me up in their system, and all our special orders were still in there for several years prior. They found who the manufacturer was on the carpet, called them to confirm they still made it (even though Lowe's no longer officially carried it), and sold it to me.

I like Sweeby's breakdown very much BUT although i think the brown is lovely, I don;t like it much with your cabinets. The brown is too obvious with your glaze and it looks much too tone-on-tone and therefore a bit unimaginative. I agree the green looks a bit funky (although, that was what I thought looked most soapstone-like). I do like the blacks in your kitchen though - they are interesting in and of their own rights just like the other colours, and they look elegant with your cabinets. Since your counters will be tiled, there is no way that they will look formal. The black looks clean, and the unpolished black (in particular) looks pretty with your kitchen! BTW, the Crossvile tiles are rectified BUT they do have a beveled edge. Are you going to keep the bevel in your installation or are you going to shave it off? If you shave it off, you may be able to get a very very nice tight, compact grout line which won't even have the "V" from the bevel to trap any foods. These are the Crossville Empire series, yes? I do love this line. I had Corsican Creme on my bathroom floors pre-remodel. Awesome - felt as close to real limestone as non-limestone can get - it had that talc-y softness of limestone/travertine.

Seconding brickton and steff on the Daltile Asian Black tile. We laid about 150 sf of it in a hopscotch pattern with 6" and 12" tiles in our mudroom/laundry room. The tile is a pretty charcoal grey with just a hint of blue, which we chose to use as our wall color. The tile is very strong and definitely moppable. We used TEC grout in Platinum, although if I could do it over again I would go a shade or two darker. We don't have staining issues because we used a product called Grout Once instead of water in the grout mixture, but I've had to scrub spilled coffee and doggie fluids from the grout joints already. We used 1/4" grout joints to work with the hopscotch pattern, but the tile sizing seemed very uniform so I bet you could easily go smaller. Here's our tile right after we finished grouting...I still hadn't buffed all the haze off. That's pretty true to color if you look past the haze, though.