I'm adding to this thread because it seems like many folks who are posting comments here don't have a thorough background in the toxicity of a wide variety of home remodeling materials. Unless you buy your flooring (wood, bamboo, cork, etc.) from a well-known, long-running green housing material distributor, it is likely that your flooring is filled with toxic glues, sealers, and other chemicals that produce VOCs (volatile organic compounds). Bamboo in particular has a lot of glue because bamboo stalks are so thin (look at a bamboo cutting board to fully appreciate how much glue is needed). I have a MPH degree (Master of Public Health) and one of my areas of expertise is environmental health. I'm currently renovating a new condo apartment and for every material, I had to buy it from a specialty distributor that carefully vetted their product portfolio. The benefit of buying from green supply companies -- living in a healthy home. The challenge of purchasing green, healthy building materials -- cost. Green materials are more expensive. But, if you add up all the costs related to adverse health reactions and getting medical treatment to address them...then cheaper, less healthy building materials aren't so cheap, are they? A good place to start is Green Building Supply (based in Illinois, they have a great website), which ships all over the U.S. I bought cork flooring from them, they're great. Can't recommend them enough. They carry a wide array of building materials including safe paints, safe caulks and sealers, safe flooring, etc. If you want to get advice before a purchase, check out the website, 'My Chemical Free House.' Corinne is a building biologist and her site is filled with awesome tips for choosing safe and healthy building materials. Take good care & stay safe!

We just got our tile! We were also skeptical of ordering from Tile.Expert, but the online reviews and local pricing quotes on tile we really liked convinced us to give them a try. We've been planning far enough ahead on our remodel that a 9-week lead time was workable, and we were excited to have our small but heavy (1,377lbs!) pallet of tile delivered this week; with the freight driver noting that the tile was really well packed compared to some he's seen. The boxes were each tightly strapped to ensure no rattling or movement, then wrapped with a very strong, very thick shrink wrap that kept everything solidly in place, and then all that was strapped down further for it's trip from Italy to the PNW. We unpacked all of it the last two days to find there was not one single broken tile in the shipment, and it was exactly as we'd ordered, at a price well under what we could have gotten locally (we had local tile shop quote on the exact same material, with our designers discount, and it was still significantly higher). We'll try to post some pics once it's all installed in a couple of months:) but wanted to share our experience and recommend the tile.expert folks in the meantime!

Tina Marie - no, I'm a Canadian living in Australia. Mostly, I couldn't care less about the Royals and their activities. I'm hopeful that both my countries will become republics in my lifetime. Although there's a fair bit of coverage of the family here in Oz, I only got interested in the subject when it appeared my Canadian taxes (which I still pay) might be diverted to pay for Harry's security in BC while he sat on a multi-million dollar inheritance. That didn't sit at all well with me, or with most Canadians, and probably colored my views. Part of my skepticism though, has nothing to do with Harry and Meghan specifically, but with charities in general. You look at the books for a lot of them, and in some cases surprisingly little of the money raised or donated goes to actual causes; the rest is absorbed by "administration" - advertising, salaries, overhead, etc. I'm very selective about who and what I donate to these days.

Kelly you should ask if they can get cheap smaller windows from like Home Depot and temporarily install them, then continue the rest of the project. The only thing they held up for us was backsplash because we wanted the trim and sill done after window install.