What Does a Soapstone Snafu Have to do with "The Waltons"?

After shutting down the project temporarily for a week of fun in TN and GA for Jake and Ashley's beautiful wedding and surrounding events (congratulations Jake and Ashley!)...

...we hauled butt to VA to be there for a 7 am Monday morning start to the long awaited soapstone counter top installation.  After arriving in VA late Sunday night after a very long drive, we awoke to the sound of rain on Monday morning.  Not just an ordinary small rainstorm, mind you, but a torrential downpour that had already turned our yard cum construction zone into a giant mudpit.  I should have listened to my father, the weather junkie, who had cheerfully had announced while we were in TN that it looked like we were going to get 4 inches of rain in the next few days in VA, but I ignored his wise words.

Despite the monsoon, the installers arrived as scheduled and got to work making the templates for the countertops, setting up a ramp to get the slabs into the house, and otherwise preparing the sink (a separate snafu, now corrected).  Here's the templates they fashioned:

 

And the raised mounted fireclay farmhouse sink:

And then the first soapstone slab was put on the boards for cutting and I went outside to take a look at our beautiful soapstone.  And I looked.... and looked....and looked again, knowing something wasn't right but taking a few moment to process the fact that the slab I was looking at did not at all resemble the slabs we had reserved months ago.  Calling an immediate halt to the installation, I was not happy...at all.  The slabs that arrived were so...ordinary.  The slabs we had selected so many months ago were so unique.  Long story short, our slabs were long gone - the quarry had held the wrong slabs for us and some other lucky families somewhere are enjoying the counters we thought would be installed in Glenlochan.  I only hope they went to good homes and are well loved.

We spent the rest of our second week of vacation (along with doing a lot of work on the house) looking at many pictures of slabs that we did not like.  We finally determined that we were going to have to give up a day of work on the project and drive three hours to the quarry to select new slabs in person (never mind that we had passed RIGHT BY this area on Sunday in our quest to get from TN to VA...ugh).  We've certainly logged a lot of drive hours this past year.  And, that is how we spent the last day of our two week vacation - making an unscheduled visit to the soapstone quarry.  Fortunately, it was a beautiful drive in the mountains of VA and the quarry was an interesting place:

And, some very interesting things can be sculpted from soapstone:

After looking at all the available slabs, we briefly considered this one:

The quartz vein at the bottom was interesting, but we decided it was a little bit overboard, so we ultimately decided upon slabs from a new quarry they were mining with beautiful black veining and an overall uniform look:

The pictures don't do the slabs justice, but we are excited to see how they will look once installed late next week.  So, the soapstone snafu was finally resolved and really had nothing to do with "The Waltons"....except that it did.  Who knew that the Walton's Mountain Museum and General Store existed, let alone that they were just a stone's throw from the quarry?  Rob and I are both fans of The Waltons although I'm a latecomer to the Walton's fan base, literally in the last three years.  We would have been stupid NOT to take a slight detour to check it out!  The museum was not open, but that didn't stop us from snapping a few pictures of the Walton's replica house:

The general store was open, however, and I snagged a few Walton's recipes, including apple cake and green fried tomatoes - cannot wait to try them out.

We made it back to Urbanna that evening (after a brief detour to see Joe and Tereasa's great new place in Richmond) in time for the Fourth of July festivities Friday night - a boat parade and then awesome fireworks.  We were pleased and surprised to discover that we have a front row seat to the fireworks on our second story balcony!  A great ending to an unforgettable (some might say "epic") two week vacation.