Hi Kitchen people, Well, we installed the countertops Friday evening. There was a nice symbolic end to the process--the back corner wasn't sitting flat on the cabinets so I paused, smirked, and jumped my cute little "self" up there to put weight on it. DH was very amused. Jump down. It was all done! Well, except building a backsplash and about a dozen other small projects and the floor to lay... but well, it felt "done" for a minute. IN fact, yesterday we both declared that we felt like we actually relaxed and enjoyed some free time. wink, wink. And we weeded the garden of 6 weeks of weeds and DH mowed the grass finally. THen we settled in for a 10 hour downpour. Photos of said countertop and kitchen to come soon. Glad we didn't build it ourselves. Oh--and the seam doesn't show--it's under the stove edge. DH figured out how to change height of stove to the right height. Phew. Good DH, good.

We bought the Shaw Forte as recommended by our local DO IT center as the premium product for our bathroom floor. We have had 3 different flooring people come to install and all took a look at these materials and walked away. They refused to stand behind their install work with this product, stating that they have seen nothing but problems with this flooring. Corner curling and material separation results in leakage and cracks forming in the floor. The tiles DO NOT click together as promoted. They simply overlap. My husband has laid hundreds of SQ FT of LVP flooring in 3 different homes. We have talked with the Corporate people at Shaw for advice, but can get nowhere. We were sold on the statement by the seller that this material is used in industrial applications and holds up beautifully! We were told by the flooring install professionals that they have never seen these Forte floors last more than 1 year! We have invested $700+ in materials and the seller refuses to take it back nor make any reparations. We have thrown that money away and must re-invest in different materials so we can get a bathroom floor! Do NOT buy this product!

SJ McCarthythank you for your very long process description and NWFA suggestion. With all the risks that proper preparation requires I think I just have to dodge the bullet and pay someone to do it. It really isn't just applying the stain with a brush kinda thing. I emailed seven companies. Four from NWFA and three from neighbors' recommendations. Just few moments ago I had one of them here to look at the stairs. He is certified has all the proper training and certifications. He seemed knowledgeable and explained all the steps. He will have to re-sand. It will be a 3-4 day job depending on how many stain coats are needed. He uses DuraSeal stains and Bona Traffic HD water based seal and has training to work with those. Each coat needs 24-48h to dry. Then he will have to do another 2-3 coats of the seal. His professional opinion was also that the stairs did not turn yellow because of the covering, but they turned yellow because the previous company used an oil based poly. They might have also applied the seal when stain wasn't dry enough. He is almost certain that the amber coloring from the photos is oil based. He never heard of floors turning yellow because they were covered. That being said, he told me I have a good chance winning a small claims court. That the photos should be sufficient. The stairs were first finished in March, we covered the newly stained steps with protective brown contractor's paper, since there was still construction and painting happening. In July we discovered that there is yellowing present. Since July I've been contacting the company to fix it. They refused because they claim that it is not a warranty issue since it is our fault that we covered them, and that is what caused the yellowing. However, the best changes in court would be with two expert opinions. What I should have done was getting an inspector's report and document the yellowing properly. My mistake was sanding the stairs down before finding a new company. Now I cannot get an inspector to examine it. The reason I had my trusted carpenters to sand down the entire yellowed staircase was because our remodel has finished, and I didn’t want a yellow staircase in the house. I was also worried someone else wouldn't be as careful, and do more damage on brand new painted baseboards and stair skirts. Most importantly I knew sanding it down completely will be a huge mess and didn’t want all the dust on our stuff. I wanted to move into a clean house. Now, there will still be sanding just not as much as the heavy sanding. Even the walls were covered in sand. It was awful...

suki mom, we have blended Sienna. We went over hardwood and tile, and had to have a lot of floor corrections done to make the floor flat enough for the warranty. The installation was complete about a week ago and we are cleaning and getting things put back together. One thing we have noticed is a handful of very small pin holes on the surface, in the middle of planks. we noticed 2 of them during our inspection of the work and the installer filled them with a wax type material and they are not noticeable. We found another one today. I am wondering if we got a few bad plank or if this might be an ongoing issue. Thanks for feedback. We really like the floors.