Dust, will it ever end?

My wife wants me to write about dust.  It's her major obsession, as she is pretty crazy about trying to keep things clean and tidy.  Quite frankly, that seems impossible.

This weekend, she completely swept out the house on Sunday, being careful to sweep the piles in rooms, and then used the shop vac to suck everything up and try to minimize the dust that gets into the air, and eventually onto the paint, cabinets, doors, etc.  Well, Sunday night it rained, so now the workers all have been tracking mud into the house, which turns to ...... dust.  

So, here are just a few of the "kinds" of dust I could think of. 

Sanding dust
Paint dust
Saw dust
Dirt dust
Drywall dust (particularly nasty)
Concrete dust
Foam dust
Tile dust
Granite dust
Cantera dust

Granite, you say.... YES, the big rocks are here, nicely cut up into thin, shiny pieces and placed in just about every room in the house in some fashion...  So, without delay, here are some pics...

This is the outer island, the granite is Costa d' Oro, or something like that, which I think means "Gold Coast", but in fact the granite has a earthy tone to it with some pretty good amount of greens, blacks, grey, and various other colors.  Actually, this isn't granite at all, but it is a quartzite material, which is very similar to granite.  When it is wet, it is somewhat translucent and you can see down through it.  It's very cool, and looks great with the Blanco Silgranite black sink, a 48 inch sink in this case.  Two sinks next to a large drainboard, all under mounted.  It is very large.  Stainless, you seem shocked, but yes, we decided they would go better in the kitchen and the oil rubbed bronze stuff is hard to match with different mfgrs, so we are going with either a brushed stainless, or brushed nickel, which is almost identical in looks.  Here, we were playing with the configuration of the devices... reverse osmosis, air switch for the garbage disposal, Delta single hole diamond valve faucet with "magnetite feature", and soap dispenser.  This island is 8 1/2 feet wide by 4 feet across....and it is heated in the wintertime ;-)

Island below is the center island, still covered in plastic, but it is a very similar configuration.  Same layout on the pipes, but the sink is a Blanco single bowl sink, I think about 32 inches across, with a ledge on one side that holds a colander for food prep.  You can wash your big skillets and such in here handles and all.  It's also very deep.  This island sink also has a garbage disposal.  The granite is called Cambrian Black in a "leather" finish.  It's from Canada, our friends to the north.  It's not shiny, but it's not dull, and what looks like pits in it is actually little specs of quartz, so it looks much rougher than it is.  This island is meant to be the cooking workhorse, while the other island is more for eating/conversation/cleanup...

If you turned 180 degrees from the last picture, you are at the cook top, which we went ahead and installed.  It's a 48 inch DCS pro-style with the wide griddle on the right...  When you come to visit us, you are expected to make breakfast every morning, and you can use this griddle for pancakes, omelets, eggs, etc.  I like to sleep in on weekends, so please have all this ready by around 9:30... Weekdays, 7:15... 

This was a shot of the outer island before the cut in the sink (they do that right on site, because they don't want it to have a hole in it for transport).  Note the extra thick edge on this piece, which is due to the extra depth of the radiant tubing they had to account for.  All the tools you see are the various grinders they use to cut and shape things, as well as polish.

This is a fairly good shot at what the Cambrian Black "Leather" looks like, where the plastic was peeled back.  I think it's a really good choice here, because it sits on the red island, and yet it isn't shiny. 

Off to the Master Bath... Here, my wife claims that I picked a granite called "Red Dragon"...  I didn't really pick it, but I liked it (a lot), and she didn't say a word about it....  Anyway, it is a pretty bold choice, but we could have gotten away with anything in here.  This particular piece is the makeup vanity, which is also heated with radiant tubing...  You will also notice how dusty things are.  BTW, they use acetone to clean up the granite and sinks.  I don't have decent pictures of the kids rooms or guest, but they all came out really nice.

Switching gears here a little, I am standing in the dining room looking down toward the study, the front door is just out of view to my left beyond that ladder.  The black built in's really set off the cantera fireplace well.  Very soon we will have all the chandeliers hanging down through there, but it's looking good....

My Mom thought this picture was granite, and I don't blame her, because it looks almost identical to the red dragon, but it is actually the dinging room ceiling.  Lupe, the paint master, just whipped this out.  We had some metallic copper paint we had played with, and he mixed in some glaze and color...  Painters have been working for close to 4 weeks now nonstop...

Same ceiling, different perspective.  We have our eye on a "trestle" style chandelier for this space, but all the ones we have encountered have very proud owners and thus extremely expensive...

Looking down the main hall...

Master bedroom.  The glazing on the walls really ties everything together. 

Jumping outside for a minute...  This picture shows the walls before the glazing (left) and the walls after glazing (right).  Again, it's a pretty bold difference, but with the tile, lights, windows, and eventually...landscaping, I think we can get away with it.  One thing that amazes me is that there is no change in texture from left to right, but the glaze really brings out the texture, especially the dark glaze...

And finally, the "grip tite" logo is almost gone.  What is amazing about the entryway is that everything you see on the outside is duplicated on the inside, so when you are standing inside there looking up, you are completely surrounded by stone and cedar about 16 feet tall... The stone guys are really proud of their work (they are also helped with the stucco).  One of them even waters the moss with his water bottle...  The complexity of this thing is pretty high, because all that stone keeps meeting itself as it passes through the arches and the arched opening above, and then around the outside over the roof line and up into the corbels.  In total, they will go through about 50 tons of stone for the whole house, 1 piece at a time.

Ok, 1 more pic I almost forgot...  Love this ceiling...  Also, the painter on the ladder puts the size into perspective.  The top of the mantle is over my head at 6'2"... Can't wait to get a fire going in there next to a giant Christmas tree... Oooooooppppps, shouldn't have said that...

Have a great week...