The Brookhaven eggshell cream cabs are starting to chip in the most used cabs; heavily used tiny kitchen gets quite a workout from careless DH, the cook, who is hard on EVERYTHING. YMMV. Except for one chip early on caused by a cast iron frying pan falling from a shelf to the sink (or something along those lines), the soapstone is in GREAT shape. I don't think we oiled it or anything after the first year. The pull-out faucet started to chip almost immediately; I think it was banged against the soapstone or something like that. I am quite happy with our 18" Miele DW; it is just the right size and empties quickly. Still happy with the Marmoleum, although it needs to be waxed quite badly; I've gotten a bit slovenly that way. Probably the only thing I regret is u$ing full $pectrum paint; I think regular, quality paint would have sufficed. Not a huge ticket item, however. After five years, the novelty has worn off, and you get used to the nicer aesthetics. The additional convenience/functionality is still there, and IMHO, that's HUGE and irreplaceable. Placing hot pans on soapstone with nary a thought has eclipsed stroking the stone!

I'm wondering why you don't seem to know your neighbors five years in ? Different sort of neighborhood than where I live apparently. If you bought here, I would willingly tell you which fence was built by which property. I could also tell you where several of the official property survey markers are located and show you. Due to each property owners idea of how to set their fence when they built it, and things that are in the way.. none of my surrounding six fences are on the property lines exactly. Some are set close and some are further in. And one was built up to my ancient cherry tree, then custom built to fit up over, around and back down the trunk. LOL Guy did a nice job there. If you know who has been in the neighborhood the longest, and if she happens to be a nice order gardener, she will tell you too. This obviously does not give you the legal answers you need, but it will more importantly let you know who paid for the labor and materials and point you in a better direction as to how to approach each property owner and avoid hard feelings. And that is more important than lots of folks realize early on. You may live next to those people the next fifty years. Peace in the neighborhood is worth more than a few inches of fence inset IMHO.

awm-- I agree. My dream rug would be a faded hooked rug. But, the reality is, the one I have is a thick wool rug that is comfortable and withstands my children-- and I paid $60 for it. (Sadly, that gives you an idea about my budget.) I don't know what I could get that would be cheap and functionally as good, esp. with my young children. kjmama and Sinky-G: ITA about the contrast. I posted so many things above that it was easy to miss, but there WILL be curtains (green ones, with a vintage pattern) on the picture window. I have the fabric, but need to learn how to sew them! I was hoping it would help with the contrast-- while I keep hearing that you should match the wall (or even keep WTs lighter) I had a feeling the sofas would look way too heavy that way, which is why I opted for darker. kjmama: My DH liked the gold, too, but mostly because he didn't want to repaint and/or spend the money on paint. I hated it after about a year-- it was not "easy on the eyes" to live with it day in and out. Stinky Gardener: I might have enough fabric to do a valance with the green fabric on that small window. If not, maybe a patterned lampshade would help? I'm glad the black toile sounds OK . . .was not sure if it would look too busy. If you have any suggestions on art and where to hang the art, I am all ears! Love the cream throw idea . . .that might help lighten up the couch a bit. Keep the suggestions coming! It is great to be able to "see" this room I have been working on for so long with new eyes!

Hi repaintingagain, I promised an update. Bottom line: our absolute black leathered/antiqued counters will require a lot more care than I was led to believe, I hate them because of this because I am so not the type to patrol the countertops-that's why I sensibly talked myself into them and out of what I thought were higher maintenance materials (marble and soapstone.) So, the expert came out (kind/knowledgeable/professional) and basically there is a choice between the lesser of two evils: 1) leave unsealed and have to deal with darker fingerprints/oil spots darkening the counters (much like what I was trying to avoid with unoiled soapstone) or 2) use an enhancing sealer that helps to minimize/mask darker oil marks BUT the sealer still etches from acidic substances which show up as lighter/hazy marks on the granite (much like I was trying to avoid with marble, and what you have going on with your countertops, repaintingagain.) As we suspected, expert guy used acetone to strip off all the previous sealer, and then the counters looked mostly fine until people started resting their hands on it and it looked splotchy/dirty again. So we had him put an enhancing sealer on one area (we left the rest unsealed) and he gave us the weekend to conduct various "mess tests" on the different finishes to see what looked/cleaned up best. (we used ketchup, olive oil, and a lemon wedge.) The enhancing sealer (Dupont Stonetech product) did NOT make the counters wet/shiny as I feared/was originally told. The color difference was slight, not dramatic, but enough to help minimize the oil spots/look of darker stains. We left half a lemon wedge on the color enhanced countertop with a round circle of ketchup next to it for 15 minutes and both left lightened/hazy/etched looking areas that could not be cleaned up with dishsoap and water (repaintingagain, these spots looked like the spots on your counters.) The olive oil cleaned up well and fingerprints did not show. On the unsealed side, the lemon wedge and ketchup left for 15 minutes cleaned up well and I was so excited, but the olive oil left a splotchy blotchy darker mess that could not be cleaned up with dishsoap and water and fingerprints were a problem. (This is NOT to say that a stronger "grease cutter" product might not have worked-I don't know-we were just using some regular Joy dishsoap) Since we have young kids who will be leaving little fingerprints everywhere, we opted to use the enhancing sealer, (because they eliminated the dirty fingerprints look) and we're figuring we are just going to have to be extremely careful not to slop any acidic substances on the counters. (Again, we are not naturally neat/tidy folks, so this is extremely disappointing.) Confession: My 4 year old saw me crying over the counters and said "Mommy, what is wrong???" with such fear on his face that I felt just awful. So having to explain and reassure him that everything is fine, these are just counters was a good reality check for me. But I am deeply, deeply disappointed to have wasted hundreds of hours of my life researching countertops-not to mention thousands of dollars- to be stuck with countertops that don't meet my expectations for the next 30+ years. My husband feels terrible for me that I'm blaming myself for making a "bad" decision and has committed to periodically just stripping the enhancing sealer all off and reapplying when our etching gets too bad/the counters look too dirty. He likened it to power washing the deck periodically, just a part of the maintenance of the item. Which did help me feel better. I just didn't know we'd have to deal with this, so since we do, I wish either 1) I would have put in a harder soapstone (Original P.A. was the hardest we personally tested, but I understand Julia and Belvedere are two that perform similarly. I'm sure there are others too) or 2) that we would have selected the antiqued/leathered Virginia Mist/Jet Mist (around here it was renamed "Nebula") because at least the veins/movement would help to mask both the oil spots or the etching (depending on whether we'd left it unsealed or sealed.) repaintingagain, I did want to tell you that you/your husband could certainly strip off your sealer with acetone and start fresh and experiment with whether you want to leave your counters unsealed or seal with a regular or color enhancing sealer. Our guy did it with his bare hands and a cloth, I was in the room and the odor wasn't bad with any of the products and I'm fairly sensitive to smells/chemicals. For any lurkers who've read this far, I hope my experience helps someone else. Interestingly, we have gotten lots of compliments from some of the subs that are coming in at the end of the project finishing up details saying how cool our counters are and how great they look in the kitchen etc. Absolute black leathered/antiqued could be the perfect quiet, non shiny, non busy countertops for someone who is prepared to accept their maintenance as part of life. I wasn't and in the end our satisfaction with things are really just a result of how well the result meshes with our expectations.