Conn 123: the door is old, and it is one of my favorite things in my kitchen. The door is original to the house, which was built in 1894. It, like everything else in the house, had about 20 layers of paint on it. We sent all the kitchen doors and hardware out to be dipped and stripped, with the intent of painting them. But we decided to just put a clear poly on the dining room door to see how it would look, and we love how it turned out. It has some dents and scrapes, but with the finish, it looks good. Definitely not for everyone, becuase it is quite "rustic." I'm sure my mother is horrified because the door is kind of beat up, and she always wants everything to look perfect and new, but I like it, and the house is really old, so it fits. We had one other door that we planned to leave unpainted, that was actually in better shape, but a worker painted it. We've left it so far (we didn't make it crystal clear that we didn't want it painted, so we didn't make a huge stink about it). I would think that if your own doors are not in good enough shape to leave unpainted, you might try a salvage place. Not sure where you would find a new door that looked old.

We have Kashmir White and River White--both are similar to the Cottage Cream depending on the slabs/lots. There can be a world of difference between them. The ones in our master bath look vastly different from the one in the laundry room. As far as staining goes, the granite needs to be sealed well. Spills should be cleaned up as they happen when at all possible. Any that sit and have penetrated the granite can be remedied with a poultice made of original blue Dawn dishwashing detergent and flour. We've been in our house 16 months and we're not the neatest people when cooking, we have kids so they are not the neatest when eating and I would not say we baby our granite or treat it any differently than we did our old laminate (other than the lesson learned from pie crusts-story below). I think just about everything has been spilled on the granite and the only problems we've had have been Crisco penetrating the granite (Note to self: Don't roll out 5 double pie crusts in row directly on the granite), and an incident with a Wal-Mart bag that was set down in a puddle of condensation from a glass and sat for a day or two. The water mixed with the blue dye from the logo penetrated the granite and left a blue circle about the diameter of a glass. We applied the poultice and it came right out. Hope this helps!

Hi - We have cabinets painted SW Dover White and Madre Perola quartzite. I LOVE the quartzite, it has a lot of white but also grey and taupe veining so it reads very warm and not too stark. The overall pattern is soft and not too dramatic, which makes it a bit like marble IMO (caveat: I don't think quartzite photographs very well, it totally stopped me in the granite yard, but I looked right past it when browsing their slabs online). There are also other white cab/white stone kitchens on here - momofthreeboys and firsthouse_mp come to mind - both are quartzite, I think. Good luck with the hunt! :-)

I’m not sure about trends per se, but I’ve always painted north facing rooms, darker by default, in deeper shades. You can paint a north facing room bright white and it will look dingy because it’s a north facing room. Just give in to the darkness on that side of your house, and celebrate light in your south facing rooms. In your case that would mean a darker foyer, and lighter LR and DR. Gold is a good color to avoid, almost always. What other colors are in your rug? Become photo handy. Then google your granite and look at images of kitchens that designers have painted, that have your granite. You will learn a lot about the possibilities. What I’ve learned is that green granite and white (or off-white) cabinets means you have two colors in your kitchen. One of them will be your wall color. Almost every image with that pairing has white or green walls. You picked a beautiful, powerful granite. It runs the show.