More marble thoughts....

The more I see marble in kitchens the more I just love it. These photos from Kitchen &Residential Design have been very helpful and inspirational to me. Apparently in this first one the backsplash is also made of carrera marble...

 

Another lovely marble countertop:

Here is a slab of white quartzite. This is an option if I can't quite wrap my head around the etching of marble. Quartzite is less porous and much harder than marble but is more porous than granite:

I spy a Dutch Door!

Elements of Style has this pretty image and what do I see?

 A dutch door!!!

White Kitchen Love!

LOVE this kitchen posted on A Life's Design The cabinets are perfect, the countertops...look at that great cooking area, the lantern, everything! I also love that the backsplash is a bit different than the regular subway tile that we see so much of these days. I also love the greige paint color and the pop of color in the window treatments. I'm posting all the pics (even the one from the living area) because the rug in the living room is eerily similar to the one in ours:

This is an interesting combination of colors for a living room with the blue on the ceiling and the neutral color on the walls:

I also like these bookshelves against the blue wall....

These are some nice bathrooms also:

 

Fireplaces:

Countertops

I've decided that as much as I love my gorgeous Antique Brown granite counters in our current house, I'm definitely not going to have something as high maintenance in our new house. I spend a lot of time using "elbow grease" to spray on granite cleaner after I wipe them down to polish them with a microfiber cloth in order to keep them looking nice. When they look good, they look really good. But fingerprints, water, everything shows.

I'd like to look at either a lighter honed countertop either in the entire kitchen or a darker honed in part and a lighter in part...maybe dark around the perimeter and light on the island? Here's kitchens with Bianco Romano granite which is a good alternative to marble if one doesn't want the maintenance. I'm still undecided. All of the following photos are from The Granite Gurus:

More Bianco Romano:

But oooohhhh....Carrara Marble is SO gorgeous...

 

Honed absolute black granite:

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Honey We're Home

We met with our architect for the 2nd time today. Our first meeting was last week where we went over preliminary stuff. Today we went to some houses he's designed. I'm in awe at how it's going to feel to be in a brand new house.

On another note I came across a new-to-me blog called Honey We're Home. She's built a house recently. I love her house and will definitely be using it as one of my sources of inspiration. Some pics:

 Here are some inspiration pictures Megan used for herself:

 LOVE LOVE LOVE these images!

Kitchen

This lovely kitchen was just posted by a lovely member, amylucey, of Gardenweb. It's gorgeous and quite different from a lot of the standard white kitchens I've seen lately. I want to note that she used BM Revere Pewter (which I'm growing to love) as her paint color, Ticor sinks, honed carerra marble around the perimeter and honed absolute black granite on the island. I was glad to see that she used the Subway tiles from Lowe's. I don't know if I've seen them in a kitchen before. They look good. I like some of the non-standard elements:

LOVE the coffee station!! The fabulous backsplash is standing pebble tile from Design-4-Less.

 

Southern Hospitality

Southern Hospitality is giving away the the Tamron AF 18-270 today. How fabulous is that?? I like my kit lens and my pancake lens and even my basic zoom lens. But this would be a major major upgrade for me. Here's a simple shot she took with this fabulous lens. I entered. Will you??

Lights!!

These were posted on Cape Cod Designs yesterday. I'll have to lust after them as they're a bit out of our price range. But they're so gorgeous and just different enough from the traditional industrial pendant. LOVE!!

Dutch Door in a White Kitchen

Here's a Dutch Door in a white kitchen. I saw this same picture on The House that A-M Built AND Simply Seleta this week and realized I stared at it for a solid minute each time. So Dutch Door...in the front or the back of a house? I've seen it in both places.