Hi! I'm using a floating raft system, too, and I have had great results with lettuce. I am becomming a total lettuce snob and it is so rewarding to go into my basement and get fresh food! This forum has been really helpful to me. Here is my system: first, I soak my lettuce seeds for a few hours before planting. I start my seeds in styrofoam cups filled with vermiculite with some small holes punched in them. I water them well, then put them in a plasticware container with a lid and check them every day. If they start to look a bit dry, I spray them with water from a spray bottle. I usually get germination within 3 or 4 days. Once I have two true leaves, I move the cup to the floating raft system. What is your system to hold the seeds? Monique.

Thanks for clarifying. "Backer board" often means a cement-based sheet product meant for mounting tile on, but he might just mean a piece of plywood. Either way, I'm not sure what purpose it would serve here. All of the problems with this idea stem from the fact that the butcherblock will expand and contract with the seasons while the marble remains a constant size. This means you can't glue the two together and expect them to stay stuck. You also can't fit stone tightly into a recess in the butcherblock and expect it to stay tightly fitted. Putting another rigid material such as plywood or tile backer between them doesn't change anything. Gluing any rigid material, be it a backerboard or the stone itself, to the butcherblock over a large area is a bad idea. Period. The glue will come loose and/or the butcherblock will develop cracks to accommodate its inevitable shrinkage and expansion. For the stone to be completely surrounded by the wood, the recess MUST be oversized, leaving a gap along the two edges where the grain of the wood runs parallel to the edge of the stone. If it's an end-grain butcherblock then there must be a gap all the way around. Such a gap will rapidly collect debris (flour, bits of fudge, whatever), and water spilled across the countertop would sit in the groove as if it were a clogged gutter, get trapped under the stone, soak into the wood and probably do some damage. You could, as I mentioned earlier, make the hole oversize and fill the gap with a soft rubbery material (silicone caulk), but I think this could create maintenance issues that I wouldn't feel good about. A simpler, less risky alternative to Plan A would be to cut the recess all the way over to one of the long edges of the countertop so that one of the marble's edges (nicely polished, of course) is visible, and just sit the stone there loose. A 24" square piece of 2cm marble should weigh something like 45 pounds, which is heavy enough that it won't slide out of its pocket accidentally but light enough to move for occasional cleaning underneath. Simpler still is to install a normal butcherblock countertop and just leave the slab or marble sitting on top of it. [begin rant] I should confess, though it's not directly relevant to the woodworking part of this, that I'm skeptical that marble is all that necessary for pastry making. I know it's useful for sticky confectionery stuff like fudge and caramel that starts out warm and needs to cool, but I've watched Julia Child roll out her pie dough on a floured wood counter, and I do it myself on a large wood cutting board. I Googled a bit to see if I could find a convincing explanation of why marble would be a superior surface, but I failed. The only explanation I found was that marble is supposed to be "cool," which, if true, would make sense in terms of not melting the fats you've cut into the dough -- but this claim is bunk unless you keep the stone in the refrigerator. Marble sitting out in the room is at room temperature, just like everything else. It feels cool because room temperature is typically lower than body temperature, its got a lot of mass and is a good thermal conductor so it can suck up a fair bit of body heat fairly quickly. For the same reasons, though, if you were a sentient slab of chilled pie dough, that slab of marble would actually feel warmer than a wood surface would because the marble would be warmer than you were, and would be able to rapidly conduct its heat into you. [/rant over]

I really like all of the suggestions, thanks for the advice! I'll check out the option of tiling the entire wall- the refrigerator is in that corner (sorry I didn't upload a pic of that side) so it would be a lot of tile that you wouldn't really end up seeing. I do like the idea though! beanpiele- I think I could only get two shelves up there unless I took one higher than the hood. The plan for the shelves is to hang the one on the right about 18" above the countertop which would leave 10-12" (can't remember exactly) between the shelf and the bottom of the cabinet. I think to squeeze in another one would be cutting that space up too much. I remember seeing a couple of kitchens with artwork when I was looking for designs and I really liked the idea. It might take a while since I would need something pretty tall and skinny but I'll start looking around. I've been very happy with how the floor turned out- it's marmoleum click and so far it has been great. I was worried about the stripes but now that the floor is down it helps the tiny kitchen feel a lot bigger and I love it. My only complaint would be that the lighter color shows dirt easily and with the door to the basement right there we have to clean it constantly. Thanks again everyone!

I think instead of putting a fence in, I'd recommend using landscaping instead. Create a privacy hedge with a walk-through path that will grow fairly tall. May take a little while before it grows tall enough, but it will look so much nicer than putting in a fence, which feels very uninviting. The type of hedge will depend on where you live, but here are a few examples: