Took the words right of my mouth Jodik..It is also so nice to see you posting again..I wish you so much good health. I just bought a ton of them of the plastic saucers too at Lowe's..The vinyl ones or course for the floor, since they are a bit raised underneath that allows air space between them and the saucer..Also on the inside there are groves that allow room for the water to drain away from the pots.. Funny thing, someone mentioned using bottle caps to raise the pots and I have been doing this same things for years, while the water sits in the saucer safely providing a little microclimate for some of my plants that love humidity.....lol DOES ANYONE KNOW WHERE TO GET RECTANGULAR ONES THAT FIT A WINDOW SILL PERFECT?? All you ever see at the big stores are round ones.. I have been googeling for days ever since I saw clear plastic ones on the window sill of the Botanical Garden Shop, and no one there knew where they came from...They were about 2 feet long and 6 inches wide..Perfect for my window sills.. Mike

This is a great thread! There are so many considerations for us summer out/winter indoors people. In the summer I have cattleyas, dendrobiums, oncidiums, and bulbophyllums out on a porch, with direct sun in the morning and late afternoon, and shade overhead at midday. This year I put out paphs too, on the bottom shelf where they had more shade. Everything does very well and adds a lot of growth. In the winter, they all move to a sunroom facing west but with a south exposure too. Life for my orchids improved immensely when I added Wonderlites (in the west and south windows) and big humidity trays to this set up, and it cost very little. Most winter days it is about 60% humidity, high of 80 F and low 55F. I have a tiny space heater to boost heat on really cold nights. My electric bill is just $25-30 a month. It helps that this room can be closed off to retain the humidity. I have the catts in clay pots and water about once a week. I think the humidity helps them cope with drying out completely. Another factor I think is that I choose catts that aren't seasonal bloomers but bloom at various times of the year. Originally I chose them just because I wanted to get more blooms, but I also figure they have a built-in urge to keep growing and not go dormant when the light and heat wane. They make lots of leads and lots of blooms during winter. My only basket plants are brassavolas that I water every other day. Calvin, I think your plan to cut back on water and fert until you see signs of growth is exactly the way to go. Generally I think it's important to observe the plants really closely and follow their lead. By the way I suffered from tinted windows for a month or two before I realized what was going on, but mine came with a little label that warned against using ammonia or detergent to clean them. The anti-UV tint was just a surface film that was gone with a few vigorous washings. By the way, I also remove the screens in winter as they cut down on the light. Good luck and keep experimenting! Margo

My sink and window set-up are very similar to yours, right down to the window moulding abutting the sides of the cabinets. the only difference is that our sill is much deeper. We have a tall faucet as well. If you're thinking that you need to tile the sill because it will get wet, I can tell you that our sill does not get wet. Don't know why, but it just doesn't. If you want to, you could trim or remove the part of the old sill that sticks out horizontally and use a different piece of painted wood trim applied on its side. By this I mean so its front is flush with the front edge of the moulding on the side of the windows. This is what we did. We have a piece of moulding about 2 inches high and maybe 5/8 inches thick. The side window moulding runs into it. So it's like a frame to the window, but a different profile from the side moulding. It looks like it belongs there. We needed a flat moulding to have room for our faucet. We tiled up to the bottom of the cabinets, and the tile runs into (and stops at) the moulding on the sides and bottom of the window. It looks nice. Sorry I haven't learned how to post pics.

Here's what our fabricator did: Before counter installation: this was an existing window and we didn't move it. The distance from the countertop to the bottom of the window opening would be less than an inch. Right after the counter and window sill were installed. Our fabricator laminated a piece of material of the thickness needed to the bottom of the sill - similar to what is done when making the counter edge. I think it would look right under each window as an extension of the sill and ending where the sill ends like ours does or under the whole group of windows. It may be easier to fabricate doing it the first way as it would be a very long thin piece for one piece to extend under all 5 windows. It looks like your filler will have to be thinner than your granite slabs so it may be difficult/expensive for the fabricator to make it extend much wider than the sill for the stacked appearance you want. Our fabricator did say that he was able to make thin pieces with our stone that can't be made with every stone when he made the thin pieces to trim our rangetop. He fabricated these pieces which are less than 1/2" high and ~3/4" wide (the slab thickness) and a bit over 2' long to fix a slight error they made when making the rangetop cut out. But I think the thin piece for the window sill wasn't as much of a concern for him because it was laminated onto the sill when it was made and didn't have to be carried around separately like the rangetop trim pieces.