Decisions, decisions . . .

Found a granite installer that's actually reasonably inexpensive - for granite anyway.  I THOUGHT I wanted a light colored counter, but as it turned out, I'm going to go with a dark one!  The two I'm deciding between are the one that's black and brown with a tiny bit of white (can you believe I already forgot the name of that one???) . . .

 

 

I know - that counter is a mess.  Don't pay any attention to that - just the granite.

 

and one  (below) that's black and GREEN instead of brown, also with a tiny bit of white.  The brown one seems to blend with the scraped portion of the cabinets exposing the brown wood.  But the Verde Butterfly one with the green blends even better with the cabinets. 

 

This picture taken with a flash makes the green more visible than it actually is. 
It really looks a lot more like the picture above this one.



Unfortunately, she didn't have a sample of the Verde Butterfly that I could bring home, so I'm going to need to look at a sample when the guy comes to measure tomorrow before I'll be able to decide for sure.  What do you think??

 

Then David and I talked about how to make up the dutch stall doors and we decided to do the bottom half of the doors flat instead of with an "x" or "z" trim piece so that it won't be a problem keeping it clean.  He may saw a few lines into the plywood to make it look like boards (like he did the shutters on the front porch), but that won't collect dirt or horse poo anyway.  He IS going to put thin trim boards on the TOP half of the doors, just not on the bottom.

 

What he said he planned to do is:

 

build a basic frame for the plywood exterior to be attached to, then add small trim pieces to the outside edges of the door to give it a "finished" look. The "Z" or "X" pattern was just for show, there's nothing structural involved with that. Also, installing a metal "cap" on the top of the doors is a good idea, I was thinking about that myself because of the horses liking to chew things. Sheet metal would be easiest to install, and I can buy a roll of it for a good price and have the metal company down the road from you bend it to the specifications I give them for $15.

 

But whatever he does structurally is important mainly as a matter of strength, not looks.  The doors are going to be painted the same teal as the house shutters so from the road or even from the house you really wouldn't be able to see any special trim all that well anyway.