The Kitchen?

The kitchen cabinet installation was supposed to start last week but, as this photo from yesterday shows, they're not in yet.

This is a real dilemma, as we won't have cabinets next week either.  I never dreamed that the kitchen would be the holdup.  We gave our deposit in January, four months ago, and they should have been made and installed by now.

Anyhow, most of the lights are up and the Hubbardton Forge fixtures area beautiful.  They have kind of an understated elegance.  I really like the vertical pendant in the Living Room.  It's one of the new designs they just introduced this spring.

The granite and marble are at the fabricator's shop, ready to go.  The Marble is from Vermont and is really interesting.

We'll use that on both of the vanities.

One of the many dilemmas with LEED is that, if you follow the principles, it can greatly limit your choices of materials.  When looking for kitchen counters, we considered many options.  We looked at some of the materials with recycled content such as Eco by Cosentino and IceStone.  They have some nice colors, but the nicer colors actually cost more than most granites.  From what I hear, the glass content can make them difficult to fabricate, which adds to the final cost.  Locally obtained materials also contribute to the final LEED rating.  Materials sourced and fabricated within 500 miles count.  This includes all of New England and gives us a range including most of Virginia, New York and Pennsylvania, continuing several hundred miles into Canada.  I probably would have given up the 1/2 point and chosen something like this Labrador Antique granite, but it's from Norway - well over 500 miles away.  It has really great blue crystals that glow when the light hits them.  My eco-conscious wife prevailed, though, and we decided to go with the Atlantic Blue granite from south-eastern Canada.