The next time I decorate by a colour of the year will be the first time. Don't hold your breath. I have nothing against this particular colour but it doesn't work with all the things I've collected over the years, and I am not about to discard carpets bought after hard bargaining with dubious merchants in Istanbul or Islamabad because they don't "go" with a paint colour that someone voted "colour of the year." In its place, I think the colour would be quite nice (better than this years choices, certainly). It's just that my place isn't the right place for it.

Looks like a difficult one, we have this issue sometimes with a tiling equivalent. If the works done before hand are not straight, flat etc, it can be very difficult and even damaging to try and install something flat over the top (benchtop, tiles etc). We see dodgy plastering jobs that get tiled onto, it is virtually impossible to do a good job if the base work is off. Smaller tiles will show obviously and larger ones will have a great risk of breaking with these small voids under. Therefor the tradie installing the 'aesthetic' aspect cops the brunt of mistakes made by the trades before hand. It can thus be difficult to blame them for this, as it doesn't necessarily indicate their poor workmanship. However, if you are paying a professional to do what it takes to complete the job in a high quality manner, then there is always a way to fix this ($$$). If it was going to be a foreseeable problem, and cost you more money, he could have asked you if you would like him to make more expensive changes to achieve the perfect finish, or continue as is at the risk of it being sub-par finish. That should have been your choice to make on consolidation. So it is a tricky one for sure! Are the cabinets below new or is it just a new benchtop?

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We have been building our house for over two years now. The supply chain downturn has made it a nightmare. We are camping on the mezzanine floor of our warehouse so it isn't costing us to wait, but if I had rented a property while building we would be in trouble now. I purchased most of our plumbing supplies early in the build so at least those items have not gone up in price, but many others have. We ordered and paid for a cantilever pool awning in February this year, and it was sent in three lots. The last delivery was two weeks ago. I suspect the company was having a hard time getting it out of China, so not their fault. We had quotes for fly screens/security screens that totalled over $25,000. We had to forgo the security screens in favour of fly screens for most of the house. We had a quote for a large aluminium mesh panel to place on the front left corner of the house which was over $25,000 also. The fencing company got an order wrong and we ended up with the wrong colour louvre panels on the front driveway sliding gates, plus the wrong colour for a fence. We have managed to turn it into a positive by keeping the wrong coloured louvre blades, and they will now be put up vertically on the front corner of the house, instead of the aluminium mesh. They are six metres long, but the house is two stories, so all good. We had to keep the gate panels the same, so the wrong colour will have to be exchanged for the right colour. People are still building houses here, and some of them are going up very fast, so I don't understand why ours has taken so long. We have purchased most of the goods locally, but I suppose the suppliers are having trouble getting them from overseas. I am at the point where I am losing interest in this house, which is a shame because it will be a beautiful house when finished.