But I've sometimes gotten stung because of this fixation on the tree and not seeing the forest. One disadvantage of stone is that it's colder (I have limestone in one bathroom and porcelain in another. There's a big difference.)

I'm looking for something that will look time-worn, but not "just dirty". There's probably a fine line there and it depends on how you see it. I love old stone cathedral floors, but in a house of course you don't want it to stand out as being ugly. If it gets worn down in places or etched, that's OK. If dirt and stains get into the fine depressions in it, I think it'll start to look bad tho. I have a small slab of honed Carrara next to my sink and it's never gotten stained. So I'm not worried about the floor staining.

SO! Those of you with real stone tile (which stone is it? Marble is harder than travertine is harder than limestone) haw do you like it? If it's a lot of maintenance, what kind and how often? What are the downsides you've experienced after living with it for a few years?

The tile store guy says he just doesn't like stone in a kitchen b/c of staining and "maintenance", but I'm not sure if he was pitching his porcelain.

Thanks for reading this and responding!

Thank you!

Thanks!

Thanks for your help.

Does anyone have a link to that? Or can someone provide me the steps for doing it properly? We have soapstone being installed (finally!) on Thursday, and this place mostly does granite, and I just want to be sure they're doing it right.

Thanks!
K

The sink surround pieces before:

routed and polished edge for one side

using a jig to cut, row by row, the drainboard with a diamond circular blade saw

Using a belt sander to smooth

checking the fit

more smoothing

starting to look like something

wet sanding

glued in place, sanding the joints

faucet hole

lining it all up

drainboard closeup

tada!

I really think it was the advice to actually lay the kitchen out on the ground outside with all the measurements and walk around it to see if it felt right.
For me it was much better than plans on paper. I took my measurements and scraps of wood and laid them out in the various plans I had come up with.

My husband thought I was crazy standing out there pretending I was cooking and getting stuff out of the frig and such.

Of course I learned many, many more things but this helped the most.
What about you all?

I've been told that the vast majority of noise comes from the airflow, not the blower itself, so the location of the blower isn't really significant. I figured I'd go with the remote blower anyway - better safe than sorry.

However, in reading the spec sheet, they (Wolf) indicate that the combination of a short duct run and a remopte blower can lead to an increase in noise. Now I'm not sure which option is best.

The duct will be heading up for about 3 feet, make a 90 degree turn and head horizontally through the top of my pantry for only about 6 feet before popping out the side of a brick wall to the outside.

Internal, inline and remote are all options as far as space goes. What are the pros/cons of each? If inline and remote aren't "better" why do they offer anything but internal?

Please share your pictures of your cabinets with (or without) molding ... close up pics of your molding would be even better! (unless you have 39'' cabinets ... that will just give me 39-inch-envy LOL)

TIA!

I'll start.
(Please copy the previous list then insert your entry/entries alphabetically. Thank you!)

Crown Point
IKEA
Kitchencraft
Kraftmaid
Quality Custom Cabinetry (QCC)
Schrock
Thomasville
Ultracraft

http://s58.photobucket.com/albums/g267/d_roady/DIY%20Soapstone/

Some teaser images:

Various parts of my story in progress have been posted in other threads, but I'll try to mention some key points here.
We were very interested in keeping cost down, so the DIY option with soapstone was wonderful to discover. A quality granite or Silestone install would have been triple the cost.
We went to M. Teixeira in N.J. and picked our slabs. If I had it to do over I would NOT have chosen two side by side slabs. The vein patterns are too similar and end up repeating each other in our kitchen. Out of 4-5 side by side slabs I'd take the 1st and last, for example.
When planning how the slabs will be cut, I'd suggest the backsplash pieces be taken from exactly the same spot as the counter they will sit on later, so that the veins and everything match.
Black epoxy was best for 99% of the seams in our install, but where it crossed a white vein I had to make some corrections - digging the black out with a Dremel and replacing with "Instant Install 29" epoxy, which cures to a translucent white. The Instant Install 29 is great to work with, 14 minute working time and then it suddenly hardens up, locking things into place. You can sand it 15 minutes later (thus the name, 14+15=29). It can be tinted to match the stone too. 5 minute epoxies are too fast for big seams I think.
Make sure your cabinet tops are a perfectly even plain, 6' long levels help. Shim any and all gaps - none of mine were more than 1/16". Then get a bead of caulk on the cabinet tops before resting the stone on them. This just makes for perfectly even support all around. We used bottle jacks to lift the stone up a few inches, caulk under it, then set it back down gently.
Doing the caulk and a seam at the same time is daunting, but the caulk has a long setup time, so it works out OK. You can slide the stone over an inch to close the seam after buttering on the epoxy. Jam it as tight as possible to make a thin seam. Most important for a good looking seam is to have the two stones perfectly aligned - any height difference will have to be fixed by sanding one down to match the other.
Diamond cutting and shaping tools are great. They cut the harder parts of the stone just as well as the soft parts, which makes for nice straight lines and even surfaces. A diamond grit drum on an angle grinder is great for shaping the edge of a sink cutout, for example. Regular sandpaper drums don't do as well.
The dust from cutting and shaping is amazing, wait till it's warm and do as much outside as possible. If you can't, like me, then get a good fine particle dust filter for your shop-vac and always attach a collection hose to the tool, or have someone hold the hose right at your cut. It makes a huge difference.
When cutting you need to support the stone underneath, so it won't fall away and break off before the cut is done. I had 1/2" thick styrofoam sheets available, but thick rubber mats from Costco would work too. The photo album shows a good example of this in practice.
For final sanding I tried a million things. What worked best on the flat areas (to clean up seams) was a 5" wet sanding pad on a dual action polisher at its lowest speed. I used a Porter-Cable 7336. Sanding pads were 240 and 400 grit. For a backer pad I used a flexible one made for car buffing, rigid pads were too hard to handle. For product specifics, see my other post on this topic. Edges can be sanded with a good hand block and wet sandpaper. The highest grit with any benefit I found to be 400. Others may stop at 220 or 340 - just a matter of preference.
I feel like there's a million things to say but this has rambled on enough. Happy to answer questions and add details in follow up posts. But if you're looking for tips, please do check out the full Photo bucket album. There's 80 images covering every step of the way.

Thanks again everyone and happy Easter!
Don

thanks!

Here is a link that might be useful: some visualization help