What a fun thread. I'll just bump it mostly for the opportunity to laud and thank CP. Wow. I must certainly be caring for my family's health because I am contemplating buying a copper sink. As if the price tag weren't discouragement enough, I will stay very, very far away from el creeeeeepy Rachieeele now. I, too vaguely remember that ad from my youth. It was as creeeeepy then as it is now. Geesh. So yeah -- copper is copper. It's pretty, it's relatively good in the cleanliness department when not gunked up with a sealer (no doubt precisely due to its oxidating patinating qualities -- btw, I don't know about the cleanliness properties of copper but I do know some about ss having worked once for a company that manufactured a product marketed to hospitals and other industrial purposes for cleaning the ss. The take-home message was, no one's ss is clean; to get an operating room clean-enough requires unbelievably scary-strong chemicals and this only lasts very briefly. Your kitchen sink is absolutely certainly scary-gross (as in unhealthily so, regardless of how much you love your children). And your countertop is too, regardless of whether you smear the microbes around immediately after deposition. Them's the breaks. Bugs happen and btw, they're winning...) So my question is: what's wrong with a Mexican sink if you can be sure it's not got a sealer on it? I'm just talking small vessel here, so it's not like it has to withstand a lot of weight or be made to avoid gaposis . Is this just garden variety xenophoblia that causes people to steer away from Mexican copper? Because it's my impression that there are some pretty fine Mexican copper artisans and my only real regret is not being able to jet down there to interact with one in person. I may try to check out this place as a consolation prize. Can anyone suggest to me some pitfall I might encounter here or some pointed, probing question I should ask in order to insure adequacy? Maybe, should I ask about the purity? Do I care? What's wrong with using recycled copper? Sounds like a good thing to me?! And for that matter, do I really even care if there's a light brown copper sink finish? Eventually it will fail, then it will be slightly more splotchy than usual for a period of time so short I, in my insensitive glory, will barely notice. I don't know about the rest of you, but a year lasts an eyeblink around here. So my question is: if I don't care about blotchiness or unevenness in patina, at least temporarily, perhaps I can even live with a "light finish" too, eh?

Thank you, Monkeymo! Sayde, I will check email in a minute, but I don't mind posting info here. Have before. I've linked pictures below. I used a VAH liner. 48" range. Liner was that or close. I don't recall exact length. The first photo shows location before hood was started. DH and I recessed the medallion into the wall. The second photo shows the liner installed in the wooden frame. Liner was attached to wall first, and top vent section (metal triangle looking piece) attached on top. 3 sided hood frame was built in their shop, attached to wall/liner, then covered with pine trim on top and bottom edges. This picture shows plywood piece cut/installed on each side. Front was next (no photo of that). 3rd photo - front shot of the above. 4th photo - right after we moved in. So shiny! lol Did not have time to give patina - easy to do by leaving copper outside for a couple of days and dousing with bucket of water. Let dry. Repeat numerous times until you get the look you want. Lay flat, if you tilt you will have streaks. I did spray with water a few times, but hard to reach top and I didn't want to spray paint/wall. Most recent picture is on Atticmag. Still shiny, but not as much. Is not sealed with anything. Most any carpenter should be able to build. Basic skills, with the exception of making trim - have to have the right tool/bits. Let me know if you have any questions. Here is a link that might be useful: hood photos

Thanks live_wire_oak - I find myself agreeing with nearly all of your style points. I don't think we realized how prominent the roof was until we really spent some time looking at it from the street. I don't think changing the roof is in the budget now (it's pretty new), but we'll definitely keep that in mind. We're both really intrigued by the suggestion of a slab door - what is that? We picked up some paint samples yesterday. Old gutters are down and the house is already looking cleaner, even without the new ones up. We picked a gutter color that is called 'wicker', and had SW mix paint to match. Here's a pic of the samples we put up. It's dim - by the time the paint had dried, this area (east facing, under covered patio) is shaded - but you see the colors we're talking about, over the green and next to the brick. Trim/gutters - light tan (color matched wicker metal gutters) Front Door - BM Currant Red (1323) Shutters (if we do -- causing marital strife) - SW Umber Brick (more marital strife - not painting though!) - 6140 Moderate White. I like the green but we compromised and are currently planning on going with the tan color -- which we color matched from the gutter color we're putting up. That will be all the trim. The dark brown we were thinking for shutters, but if we don't do shutters... Clearly we won't use it :) Would you consider using that brown to paint the aluminum visible in the picture of the front? We'll replace the windows -- they're 1966 single pane glass -- but not sure when, and we don't like the aluminum lines.(could be usable) I like your suggestion on the planters and I'll consider today a success if I can get them dug up before the Rangers game :) Melanie, I believe, on the landscape forum, suggested creeping thyme -- I think we'll do something like that to try and break the planter box line. I also like the idea of semi-circle as landscape bed. My kids aren't playing out there - too close to the busy street - and having something to break up the monotony and add curves would be great. Melanie -- thank you for explaining! I'm looking at his books on ebay now. Thank you SO much for your help here and on the other forum! You've made us like our house a lot more. Summary on what we're going to do this week: Gutters (wicker above unless someone can talk me out of it in the next day) installed, trim/fascia/sofits painted to match. Paint front door Remove boxwood in planter boxes up front Pause and evaluate.... To sum up questions: If we don't do the shutters in Umber -- which my wife wants to do, and my painter assured her it was easy to shave the raised brick to install them, what else can we do in the brown to pop? The window frames? We had a decorator come to help with color selection, and she was a strong advocate of both shutters and painted brick. My wife is still on board with leaving the brick unpainted for now, but the shutters idea has come back with a vengeance. For what it's worth, most house in the neighborhood do ... But, this decorator also suggested we call a Realtor and ask for advice, which is exactly what I DON'T want to do. I want it to look good and not offend those that know what they're looking at! We were going to paint the windows in the white color, but would the brown pop? Give us some color without having to throw up fake shutters? VERY interested in learning more about doing a copper door. We're going to paint the door and frame in that red color above - more of a magenta. Finally, what are you guys thinking about the below picture? Dim again - my photo skills aren't the best - but this is an angle shot of my back patio. Same brick, which you can see. To the left is another bay window just like the ones out front, this one into the breakfast room/kitchen. The ceiling you'll see the drywall portion is white -- and then the wood portion turns to the trim color. The decorator we had suggested we paint the same color, the moderate white, so there's not a line -- opening the space up. But the problem is, if I paint that white, I think I have to carry the white all the way around the house under the roof, meaning the wood on the underside of the roof would be white, the rest of the trim tan. (We're thinking the white above) Or -- can I just tape off a logical line somewhere and transition from white to the trim color? Or .. I can just paint the ceiling the trim color, but then it all kinda blends in. THANK YOU!

Hi Sosha, I fear this thread has dropped off the face of the earth, but wanted to find it again today and just saw your comment -- we used a special-ordered liquid glue made for copper (I'm so sorry I can't recall the name of it, but they may have even better glues on the market now) and clamped both the top sheet and the side bar pieces firmly onto the mdf using woodworking clamps. Were I to do it again, I would probably use a vacuum system for the clamping, since there was one slight portion of the flat peninsula top that bubbled after a few years. The new owner of my old house says they're still OK 7 years later, so this method of constructing the counters apparently has longevity, even with minor hiccups here and there. Best of all: you can recycle the whole schmear when you're sick of it, and make a few bucks for your next countertop. :)