Thanks for your kind comments! Trish... I am so sorry that Sandy affected you and your home in such a major way. I hope that things are going as smoothly as possible as you try to put things back together. To deal with all of that with a busy two year old must be especially challenging. I absolutely love my tile and its warm somewhat rustic appearance so I'm glad that you like it too. I did some checking for you and have some info which I hope will be helpful. I sourced my tile from my local Virginia Tile store in Michigan. They would ship to NY but that would be hugely expensive, of course. I googled Edimax distributors in NY and came up with a couple who told me that they don't carry Material Forte and Westchester Tile in Scarsdale which told me that the Materia Forte was being discontinued(!) I quickly called my Virginia Tile rep who had not heard anything about that and was still expecting shipments within the next month. Checking further, I found the AllStone Boston Design Center that carries Edimax tile. The good news is they ship from a warehouse in New Jersey so that might be reasonable to consider. I spoke with Lauren Maggio who was very helpful and suggested that you contact her (lauren@allstone.net) with details about the sizes and quantity that you'd be interested in and that she could order a tile sample for you. Their phone number is 617-737-2200. Depending on the size tiles that you're considering, I wouldn't be too hesitant to order tile in this way. We found that, by doing the usual mixing of boxes, we were happy with all of the large tiles and how they blended together. The 4 x 4's were a different story however because they had much more variation in tones and because they were a tumbled tile with uneven edges... some of them were very, very uneven. We ordered way more than we needed and picked out the best ones to use. I hope that helps... please feel free to let me know if you have any other questions that I might be able to answer. I'd love to hear what you decide to do and look forward to seeing pictures of your room.

T M - your house turned out really nice. The porch looks so much better and I love your red roof. By the way, we also have rain chains and love them. We get a lot of snow so we hooked the chains to large pots that have holes drilled in the bottom. We filled the pots with gravel and river rocks. The pots sit on top of small cisterns that are buried and are connected to a drain that drains to the street. It is working out great. Another bonus is the water will freeze on the chains and create some very interesting "ice sculptures."

Around my way, there are plenty of old Victorians that had all the trim removed and vinyl siding put on. They look a lot like your house because the siding tends to be put on top of older siding, making the windows and window trim less prominent. I work in a building built in the 1700s. It's last incarnation was a sorority and it's current is an office building. You'd never guess it was truly old. You might think 1950s, because the interior is worn and not up-to-date, but you'd be off by 200 years. If they redid the interior, you'd never know.

Note: We're having the stairwell painted, hence the light colored patch on the wall. I'd imagine that a chandelier would hang basically to the top of that painted square, though.