Another question for those of you that have the black interior doors in your home; Have you painted ALL Interior doors black or left some other colors? Our painter agreed to do it in our new construction home for a reasonable price so we're giving it the go ahead, but I can't decide if we should do the closet doors as well?? The majority of the windows in our home will face North/South and basement won't get much natural lighting except for two drop egress windows we're having put in. I've seen many comments that say the lighting is very important as to not make the home feel too dark with black doors. Thoughts?

We built a bonus room above the garage and use it as a theater room. I painted all the trim, built-ins and doors black. I love the look, however, it shows dust and every little knick....have to work a little harder keeping it clean but it's worth it. :)

I have lived in several houses and now live in a condo. I have loved both for different reasons and at different times in my life. My first residence when I was first married was a rented apartment. I didn't love it …but it was what we could afford. Then we got a dog…and he needed a yard. So we bought a house and lived in the suburbs, had kids and loved the suburbs as they were growing up. It was good to have the space…and as our family grew…we upsized a couple of times. As we were able to afford more we also gradually moved closer to the city with each move. In the suburbs we got to know the neighbours…some great….some not so great. The kids made friends in the neighbourhood and we met their parents….and made new friends. The best way to meet your neighbours is by walking a baby or a dog. But once our kids went off to college…and we had more money we bought a townhouse in Florida to escape the Canadian cold weather and a summer cottage for summer weekends. And we came to realize that it just made sense to simplify our lifestyle. We needed a place that required less maintenance cause we were not home as much to look after things. So we moved to a condo in the city. I thought I would hate it but I love it. I walk most everywhere or take the subway. I take a cab when I need to. I have a car….but can go for days without using it. Everything is within walking distance…grocery stores, department stores, boutiques….you name it. For this time in our lives the condo lifestyle suits us well. When that changes…it will be time to move on again.

@ Marian Baker, I’m sorry, I don’t have a before photo. It was a Vigo brand sink, but I’m sorry to say that brand name is not actually important. Unfortunately, spontaneously exploding tempered glass sinks happen no matter the brand as I discovered. It’s not something most people would know about, but it’s not super uncommon. It can also happen with tempered glass shower doors and the like. The most common theory is that during the manufacturing process they can get cooled down too quickly and it causes a problem waiting to happen and if your glass product got cooled down too fast, it will eventually explode... no way to tell until it suddenly happens. In my case, I was in the room when I happened... most cases you read about it happens in the middle of the night or something and nobody is next to it. It exploded mere inches away from my head as I was bending over replacing a trash bag in the can, I was not touching the sink at all. I was ok, aside from some bloody scratches... not because the glass was sharp because it’s tempered and it shatters into small, smooth pebble like pieces... but because the force of the explosion was so great that the pieces tried to imbed themselves into my skin. We found a lot of glass some 20 feet away, my head was about 8” away when it blew, I thought a gun had been fired next to me at first. Fortunately my hair shielded my eyes as I was bent over, that could’ve caused some real damage. We contacted Vigo, as well as the... oh, I can’t think of it off the top of my head, the government agency that issues recalls and they sent out a representative to investigate, and we even had our local news station do a story on it. Vigo was great once we got past the initial representative on the phone the first time we called (he was a jerk) but Vigo offered to replace our sink with any sink from any of their lines, and because I refused to replace it with another glass sink, they suggested a sink from one of their composite stone sink lines. It was a much more expensive sink, and we had to wait a bit because the size we needed was backordered, but I’m very pleased with how Vigo handled the situation after all. But I would NEVER get a glass vessel sink again. There are no industry standard laws for making them like there are for many other glass products (like a car windshield) most manufacturers abide by some voluntary Canadian standards which seem fine but are not enough apparently. Anyways, you can google exploding glass vessel sinks and you can read up on other stories like mine... not something we knew about when we bought ours. I’d never buy glass again, no matter how gorgeous I think many of them are.