Oh Gosh, I'm just so THRILLED at the response. And can't tell you how GREAT it is to SEE all of you. I'm loving this. Hope the rest of our Group will get in the album. Luvs, you can share a pix of you and Rich ya know! Otherwise, get him to snap one of you asap so I can put it in both family albums. Leveta, I'll grab yours from GJ and put here. Dream, you're are well-named! How lovely you are! Bourb, what a beautiful family you have. Lacome, your smile just lights up that room. I know you'd be so much fun to spend time with. Well heck, everyone is fun here!!! I'm going to add your photos to the album in just a few minutes. Keep 'em coming, please!! hugs and thank you, Karen

They do -- and I like those. They caught my attention with the ones that were a little different though. Take a look at their website -- they have Italian marble and swirled alabaster shades in 14" and 16" sizes and in brushed nickel. You cans search the site by finish. You might find a local dealer who will order it for you if you don't find it online. I'm looking for a breakfast room fixture too -- probably a dark bronze or wrought iron with fat candles. I saw one in a store that I really like, but I don't like the shade on it -- they are butterscotch color and too dark. I'd really rather have white and they just say tough. Can't change them. The gal at another lighting shop who sold us our dining room fixture showed me a white glass that might work, so we ordered one and I'm waiting for it to come it. Meanwhile, I really don't want to buy from a store that offers no customer service (same story when we were looking for the dining room) but I saw this fixture when looking for the dining room fixture and haven't seen anything like it anywhere else. I've been looking at pendants thinking about replacing the recessed fixture we have in a dormer above our front entry. There is a window, but you don't even see the chain of the foyer fixture, so I thought it might be fun to have something you do see from the street. I've always liked that in other houses. I haven't seen anything that really grabs me -- especially for an area that will be so hard to clean. We put a small Christmas tree up there our first couple of years in this house. I loved it, but not having to go up the ladder and climb up there. Getting up on another ladder or step stool to clean a fixture once up there is not something I would look forward to, so I will have to love it to make the change.

So, dear husband was there this morning and when the GC arrived, said to him "Gee, this wasn't how we expected it would be." Long story short, they took out the tape measure and measured everything on that wall. When they measured the wall itself from the right hand corner to the left side where that wall ends, they found that the crew had framed it an inch longer than the dimension in the plans. (Thus making for the 1 inch that they had to add the left-hand spacer for. :-) (Big sigh. This is what is killing me in this whole process. The whole kitchen had been gutted, so these are brand, spanking new walls. Not a case of trying to fit the cabinets into existing walls and blaming the walls. And the KD came out and remeasured after the gutting before finalizing the cabinet order. So there is no logical reason why the crew shouldn't have framed to the dimensions in her drawings. At every milestone - before the blueboard, before the plastering - we asked the GC "are you sure this fridge space is right?" Ok, I'm venting, and I suppose this is a rhetorical question: do I have to pull out a tape measure every day and confirm that they are building to the drawings? Yes! How tedious!) Soooo, once they saw that they had not built the wall to the plans, they took down that area and re-adjusted it so that it matches the drawings. :-) Which means that while there are going to be the 3/4 inch wide places on either side of the above-fridge cabinet for those two panels on either side, at least they are matching 3/4 inch wide places. And it matches the drawings (which is somehow comforting to my left-side-oriented brain). Bless you all GWers, because I would have been much more panicked today without having you to 'talk' with. If I ever have the stamina for another kitchen reno (way way into the future from now), I'm going to make it a GW-designed kitchen. You are the best! --Lee

I appreciate your comment, Lukki. I guess the difference for me is that the nature of Hot Topics is going to draw spice, feisty, opinionated people who can sometimes go a bit far and become mean spirited, and I think that is why GW keeps HT pretty separate from all of the other threads, i.e.: it doesn't show recent comments made to that thread on the front page, that sort of thing. It's really hidden, so I don't think anyone really has much of a right to complain or be critical because it's not in anyone's face at all. One has to deliberately go there. If it's not one's cup of tea, they don't have to even know it exists. But again, it IS "Hot Topics", after all. I think it's the one place where people can and should be allowed to express a little more "heat", so to speak. GW has very professional moderators, as well, and I think gets that about HT. But HD Conversations, for example, is out front and it is not inherently meant to be heated, and I've seen some shocking and vicious attacks on people, serious ganging up, much worse than anything I've seen on HT, where, again, it's to be expected to a certain degree. I can keep my wits there, and elsewhere (thank you for that, btw), because I try to keep my eye on the ball and not get or make things personal, which is a big mistake a lot of people make (and don't get me going on passive/aggressive behavior. Ugh. I loathe it). If I really have a personal animus for someone here or there, I simply ignore them and don't engage because my personal feelings about another are completely irrelevant and certainly of no interest to anyone else. So no, it's not for the thin skinned, but I think that is okay to say about a forum called "Hot Topics". I don't think, though, that such a thing should have to be said about a forum called "Home Decorating Conversations"!