Hey Auzzy, Great question. The salesperson at the tile store near me suggested a mosaic of tiny marble squares for my master bath shower floor. I asked if it would be a pain to keep clean, and she said, "No, not at all." She said that the marble and grout would be sealed upon installation. Now, after reading the John Bridge site (thanks for the reference - I didn't know about that) I am worried. I didn't buy anything yet, but am close to needing to put the order in so the materials will be ready in time for the contractor. In my last bathroom, I had a tub, but on the bathroom floor there was slate that was gorgeous. I did have to seal it every 6 months but it was very easy to do. If that would be good enough so we can get our stone shower floors, I'd be fine with it. Experts?

the guy who installed it appeared very competent. He said those slp98 furnaces did have lots of issues with sensors and condensation on heat exchanger that was fixed 1.5-2 years ago and now run pretty good... A guy will come and install a temp sensor for free tuesday (was on the original quote) and also install a 5" filter box. No returns yet, i will run for a while first and figure out the best place to add one. I could easily add a return right by the furnace in the basement but i dont think that would be a good idea as all it would do is suck air mostly from the basement not so much from the other 2 returns anymore ... I have the lennox icomfort controller. today it works again. it defaults to the load variable staging thing and in some of the menues the blower output was 970 cfm. this was factory default. not sure why this is, it should blow much harder, but my ducts should handle that well. What a saga this is. I wish there would be one competent guy who just gets it done right without having to be involved with this for months ....

Not sure if this helps or not, but we're doing a mix of stain and creamy cabinetry in our kitchen, the trim is SW creamy throughout the house EXCEPT in the study which is stained. We have french doors to the study that are stained on both sides and they are the only stained doors in the house. Our built-ins are the same SW Creamy as the trim, EXCEPT the bead board in the back is stained, as is the mantle. Obviously, I love both stained and painted wood so it was important to me to have them both. In your situation, I can't see why it wouldn't work to have a white kitchen and stained cabinets in an adjacent room. I think the key is to find a way to make the white kitchen warm, since stained wood is naturally warm. Just my very unprofessional 2cents :-) Here are some pictures of our house (in progress). Kitchen (all the granite is Brown Antique but some of it is covered with white paper) Family Room Study

Thank you all for your input! From a cost & speed stand point, I think a pre-formed shower pan is probably what we would prefer. Our shower is a pretty standard size 36"x36" so I don't anticipate running into a lot of trouble in finding a pan that will work. live_wire_oak thank you for your suggestions on other materials for the shower pan, I will look into them. I agree with you that if we had plenty of time, we could probably figure out how to do the shower pan & tile the walls. Our timing may not have been the best for this project as we have a fairly hard deadline of end of March for getting this done. As a result we're trying to do what we feel confident doing and farm out that which we could probably do, but would be massively slower at. Calling individual trades might be another way to go. Hadn't considered that option. I'm willing to GC it myself if that's what it takes.