Window sills and lazy susans are awesome ideas for remnants. We've decided on Hanstone Aramis instead of Paperstone Gunmetal, which... well, I feel somewhat railroaded into it, but it's not so different from Silestone Merope that we care a great deal. It also looks nice against the cabinets and the flooring. I'll ask the fabricator when he comes to measure if we paid for the whole slabs and if there are any costs incurred by bringing the remnants out with the tops. Finishing the edges would just give me an excuse to rent a grinder. :-)

ugh.... we are just at this point now and realized that our new counter/breakfast bar is 12' with the sink cutout dead center. My wife is stuck on an undermount and we really wanted granite... we will, of course, be getting a few fabricators to bid it. But is it feasible to do the seam with a cutout at the seam? The front edge of the sink seems a bit vulnerable to me. Also the current layout has the dishwasher adjacent to the sink and I guess we'd need to get the cabinet built with a support at the seam. If we can seam at the sink it would be small, just the length of the front setback (breakfast bar transitions to countertop there)... how well does the bullnose normally line up on a seam? Do they polish it on-site? Are we better off getting used to NOT granite? The 12' counter is not negotiable in our design.

Fabulous now that we can see Cher in all her glory! Oh my, Maria, you took the leaf of faith, Cher looks great! I bet with the trim and repot, her elegant ballerina like figure (caudex ) will plump up a bit. She looks very elegant with her long slender look! I love that we can now see her in full :) You must be so happy to have accomplished this! I found the same with Harry when I repotted him, most roots where on the outside. Having only chopped Harry's heads off once... Here was my thinking: Cut them off in fall, allow him to sit in a low light area and water once a month at most. Let him gather strength for spring. Come March he had new sprouts starting. At first they were little bumps, then fully fledged sprouts and then by summer, he was on his way to his new stout look. I think late fall may be best as you will want to stop watering her due to her having no leaves, plus this will give her time to re-establish her roots between now and then. Harry did fine with watering him once a month in winter. I only started watering him once a few of his sprouts were about an inch long and green. If you look at the photo above of him with his heads cut off and the one before it, you will notice that his caudex is plump in the one with his heads and then it is more wrinkly in the one with the new sprouts. We do this same routine each winter. He looks dehydrated early spring from the lack of water in the winter but by spring he's re-hydrated and plumped up. Have you thought about how much you want to cut off? I look forward to the next update on Cher!

Here is some good, free :), advice of exactly how to avoid many of the above items, and worse, from happening. Get a really good area Real Estate Attorney (not your friend's friend who went to law school) to review your contract before you give one $ in deposit to any builder! I cannot overstate this enough. Many of the issues in these forums would have been avoided if the folks got proper representation and contract review!! Spend the $1000-$2000 its way worth it. Make a list of all your "wants" and "needs" before designing a plan. Make sure you list them in order of importance as you will most likely need to sacrifice some to obtain the others. Nothing is perfect and you will not get 100% of everything you want. Be ready for that. Find a good local architect to design your plans. Make sure you and the architect have some chemistry as this helps in understanding what you want and need (lifestyle, budget, lot constraints, etc.) and your plans will reflect that. Make sure you have not only plans but specifications (at least as many as you can think of, otherwise assign allowances such as kitchen cabinets $10K or $60K, you get the idea). Put the plans and specs. together and bid the project out. Make sure everyone is pricing from the same information or you will not be able to truly compare. Do your due diligence on local builders (should generally not be more than 45 min to 1 hour away from their base of operation). Your architect can help you with #s2-6 (obviously #3) above but it will cost you extra. Unless you are very good at design, hire a good interior designer and make a furniture layout on your new plans. This is critical so that you know if your window and door placements work and you will be able to configure your lighting much better that way. Its worth the investment for sure. The more you pre-plan and are prepared the better/smoother your project will go. Good luck with your project.