Wow! I can't believe I got so many comments on this. So happy and will read through it all later today. You people ROCK! Just a quick update, we live on LI and found fabricator we like, Marbleline in Westbury. Stella is great and so helpful. Today we just found Calacatta Gold Bhorgini marble at European Marble in Farmingdale (Dubon Ct.) honed that is the slab I want (if I win the battle) they are also great there and I thought their selection was the best I've seen so far in marble, granite. They have multiple locations but when they get a lot, they split it up between locations so you don't have to trek into Brooklyn to see it all, the Melville location will have it. kerri helped me and they are so friendly and nice. We also found a granite and quartzite piece we like in case we (me) get talked out of marble. I am holding strong and preparing to present my case to DH and do my research. We took a chunk of carerra marble and taj mahal quartzite home (Stella's idea from marbleline) and we're planning to test it ourselves. I've seen photos of honed marble with etching and I'm ok with it. My tests will be with jelly, tea, wine, coffee, lemon, peanut butter, oj, grape juice, Gatorade, butter, honey, milk, cereal, ice cream (can you tell I have kids!!) and see how it turns out. On a daily basis this kind of stuff happens on my counters today so I expect this to continue...... sigh...... I just think that I love marble so much that even with the patina over time, it will still be stunning.

Update - so it's been a few months and a lot of work but some changes have been made. Two of the three trees down the left/driveway side have been moved to the rear. I opted to leave the third since the city-supplied Acer on the left is not doing well and will be removed shortly. The Nootka cypress near the front door has been replaced with a weeping "Viradis" Japanese maple. The bed around the front porch has been expanded to wrap around the porch and includes a purple fountain weeping beech, as well as more rhodos, hydrangeas, pennisetum, liatris and phlox sublata. I'm still working on filling in this space with more of the same. I took Yardvaark's suggestion and incorporated the Acer on the right into the bed close to it. I also added some festuca glauca and campanula carpatica to the bed. The Nootka cypresses in this bed are also stressed after a very hot summer (most of which was while the irrigation system was being put in) so I'm not sure if they will make it. Any replacement suggestions? I did get rid of one of the "mouse ears" by adding it to the corner bed. I still intend to change the other side but that may be next year's project since the landscaping budget is scraping the bottom of the barrel for now.

Cut off a few bottom branches. This will soon thereafter contribute more growth to the top as stored energy is redirected. Search out the main trunk. If other side branches start growing upward near the trunk, cut them back or off so you don't end up with the tree splitting into multiple trunks, unless you want multiple trunks.

Hanging that painting in the dining space is an interesting idea. The dining space is right off the living space, it's just one long wall. But it just might be my solution if I can hang it high enough so as not to have the dining table take away from the view of the painting. The dining table is a glass top rectangle with a marble block base. I plan on finding low back dining chairs (white & wood) and adding a bench for sitting closest to the wall. How does that sound?