thanks jjaazzy! i too finally got to speak with john yesterday. my uneasiness about ordering from a source on another continent was put to rest. he is sending me three samples of the hammershell tile. i wanted to see the square and the rectangle patterns so he is making them up for me. the backing is porcelain and i knew about the coating from the website. so, for the hammershell tile the price is $28 US per square and he told me the shipping for 80 sq (my guesstimate) would be $300 US via UPS. i was planning to use it on the floor as a trim/border for marble or porcelain under the tub so it wouldn't be in a high traffic area. i had my suspicions about it's softness. i think by the tub would be safe though, just as long as we don't bring it out too far. i guess i'll make my decisions about that as we get a little closer. that's very strange about the shimmer under the halogens. i wonder if it would make a difference if viewed from another light source? i'll have to see it when it comes in. we don't have any lighting yet (they've just gotten to our roof) so i think i'll take it to a lighting showroom. THANK YOU for the heads up! in the meantime, let me know how you do with shelltile.net. i'll have to look them up as i haven't come across them before. i'll let you know when my samples come in. ...oh, and which of the tile are you looking to buy? thanks again!

~bump~ Let's try to keep bumping this one until it maxes out (150 posts)....then bump the later one after that (the later one is dated March 22 and was started when we had lost all our threads for a couple of days).

Thanks budge1!! I just got off the phone with tabletops.com. Holy cow do they have good customer service! I emailed my problem, and in no time received a response from the owner, and he says he's received this exact same question several times and is going to work on putting something up on his website or offering something to deal with the issue. Says he's gonna get his engineers on it :) Nice. Anyhow, he says he's done something similar in his own house, and notched out the table legs (he used 4 legs, 2 butting up against the cabinets and the 2 end ones) and ran a small i-beam down the length on each side which rests in the notches. Then he said he used epoxy to level out the top edge that the soapstone rests on (since the i-beam's are never totally straight) and voila! Apparently it's been holding up for years. I might see about some cross beams still, and doing it 'ladder style' but it's nice to know someone else's experiences (and the guy's a table maker, so that gives me more warm and fuzzies.) Thank you so much for the tip!

I'm very picky who I donate to on GoFundMe. I have to either know you personally, through a friend or I know 100% for a fact your story is true. The only actual "stranger" I donated to was a mom and dad in Australia whose six month old baby died of cancer. I cried for days after he died as I followed his story on Instagram. I've donated to parents of a little girl who was murdered here in Calgary. The little girls bio-father and his wife tortured the poor thing for days before she died. The Bio-mom and step father (the good parents) both went to school with my 2 youngest kids and they needed money to go to Ottawa (?) to fight the convicted murders from having their sentences reduced. Just two weeks ago the Supreme Court upheld the convictions. YAY! And I donated to an old friends daughter who needs to diabetic pumps (one for each son) so they can try to live life as normal as possible. Both are type 1 diabetics. Not sure how much they managed to raise. I no longer donate to the Salvation Army or Red Cross in times of disaster. My sister in law lost her home and had to flee with the clothes on her back when Southern Alberta flooded in 2013. She didn't get much for help from anyone, but my family managed to scrape together $600 so she could at least buy new socks and underwear for her and her 3 kids. And I stopped donating to all the charities that my friends request money for on Facebook. I've given $50 to so many people, yet when I requested $ for the Shoppers Drug Mart Walk for the Cure I got zip, with the exception of maybe 2 or 3 people. None of whom ever asked me for anything. I do donate monthly through my bank account to the Alberta Childrens Hospital. My kids have all benefited from their services so I give back a little. And I donate blood. I think rather than criticise people who donated to various GoFundMe funds, we should say, "not my money, not my business". Right? Who cares if John Doe gets $500,000 because his wife died. It's the people who put funds up because they over spent on their visa and need help paying the tab I don't get. But at least they try, right? lol IMO, before anyone donates to ANY charity, RESEARCH to make sure it's for real.