What's above and below the Kitchen sink?

This is my lame attempt to enter Charles Buell's "Weblog anything" contest.  I love the idea behind this...but I'm rather constrained given the need for a personal picture...believe it or not, I don't have a working digital - something that I need to take care of soon.

So, my next line of attack was to have my hotelmate for my trip this week to Atlanta bring her digital.  The good news is that I snapped lots of pictures of floors/samples so I have lots of fodder for future posts.  But of course the bathroom just had a silestone countertop with nothing underneath.  Shoot.  (No, nothing to shoot.  Double shoot.)

So, won't be winning a contests here, but at least I'm participating.

So, above picture is from one of my customers in White Plains, NY - a kitchen we helped to remodel.  When I got there, Home Depot had installed the honey maple cabinets, but my customer was now lost as to what to do next and sent back all the other stuff Home Depot was going to install as it didn't look right together.  I should do a separate post about how I helped her, but the long and short of it is that we designed and installed the granite countertop, the floor and the matching tile backsplash that tied it all together.

So why bring this up for this post?  (Because I needed the points, silly....kidding).  No, seriously, one of the cool side effects of my job is helping improve customers' homes...not just the the floors/cabinets, etc. that you see...but also, what usually happens is that it gives my customer an excuse to clean up, declutter and start fresh.  It's amazing how good they feel afterwards.  All of a sudden they are happy because of all the extra space they've created and how much easier it is to use their space, esp if it's a kitchen or a bathroom.

At first, they are sometimes overwhelmed by the process...so it gets delayed a bit.  Other customers, esp when it's a wife/mom, say "Oh, great.  Now I have the excuse to tell my husband/kids they have to clean up. Thank you."

So, often, I feel that I am helping my customer in more ways than one.