Flevy, I am the b*tch too. How dare you make my child learn? Usually they change their minds after they start the next grade. They realize that they learned a lot from me. One girl said to me this year that this year was the first year she has retained anything. Sept actually said in staff meeting to only teach math and reading...nothing else. I told school board press in Dec that I was leaving in may. This was my first year there since we moved south. I also told supt that I refused to only teach math and reading. So I am not a team player. My fifth graders had five tests. Flevy,, I have been saying it for years. We are not always sending our brightest students to college. Some get grants to go and put little effort out. Why should they? They aren't paying for it. That is a beautiful kitchen. Love the cool green tile, window light fixtures, and glass doors. What is the cabinet on the left with the mixer on it? Unusual base cabinet.

Thanks so much to everyone. Romy718, your room is beautiful!! You do not need to wait for rugs & accessories to know that, it looks great and the colors are so pretty and work great together. Thanks for showing me. And I need to go on back to the backsplash thread and start looking up info on those tiles. I think the one that you said you were using in your own kitchen is my favorite...is it ok if our houses end up looking like cousins?! gpraceman, someday I hope to replace the slate hearth with soapstone. That was my plan for this remodel but budget got tight and we decided to just scrub down the existing slate hearth, my GC put some sort of sealer/enhancer on it; and we painted the shelf White dove same color as our trim. I'm not crazy about it, I really want a thicker distressed wood mantle, but it'll do for now. nyse2502, first, thank you Im so glad to hear you like my fireplace! This thread is from several months ago, in the meantime I had several other threads going round and round on what countertop material to choose. In the end I went away from the Sea Pearl, the Jet Mist, the Steel gray... and ended up with a Calcutta marble on my island that I love and a very plain almost solid gray Silestone on my perimeter which I am really happy with. It was a great solution for me. I got a (relatively) small little chunk of a gorgeous fragile material that I love, and then I have an extremely durable uncomplicated attractive counter everywhere else that I don't have to worry about. I admit to being totally overwhelmed and absorbed with my own reno that I haven't had tons of time to be looking at all the threads on here so maybe I missed it, but have you posted pics of your whole house reno? Sounds like a huge job, congrats on being done! I'll post a picture of my updated fireplace. This room still needs a lot of work...a rug, something on other side of fireplace, different mirror or something else on mantle, a screen for fp...but you get the idea. Thanks for all the support on this thread!

I didn't want any shine, but that is a beautiful tile. First picture shows gray green and second shows gray blue and green on my monitor. I can't decide whether to go with light tiles that blend in or with some color like the crackle tiles. I like the idea of a darker grout that won't show stains as much as a white grout. Sealed of course. I guess I will be doing a road trip next week. I hate driving 2 hours just to pick up tile samples, them driving 2 hours back home. I plan on picking up Sonoma, Encore, Pratt and Larson and any other suggestions I get. Thanks, Peek Oh this is pathetic...I just noticed the number of posts on this thread. Thank you everyone for helping. Peke

Thank you! We went to the supplier today. All of the White Macubus slabs looked beige. Is that generally the case? I was looking for something that looked like white marble, but without the maintenance/fear of stains. What I had really liked about the White Macabus was the veining that sometimes looked reminiscent of tree brances (vs. just the striped kind) We liked the Princess but thought the mother of pearl was a bit too tame. One slab of the Taj Mahal seemed nice. I will google the above list of names to see if one of the patterns jumps out for me We liked a White Vermont oattern as it had lots of movement but the slab was more grey than white. I had always thought White Vermont was a granite but the stone person kept saying it was a quartz. Please explain if you can. They really seemed to be pushing the White Vermont. Not sure why. DH liked a superwhite which he thought was more a granite Thank you!