I selected honed carrara marble for my main/guest bathroom vanity top. I love it and I intend to use honed marble for my master bathroom when I get to remodeling it. Personally, though I like both polished and honed marble, I prefer the honed look. As porkandham said, polished is either more prone to etching or shows etching more than honed. If you do a search in the kitchen forum (and probably here in bath too) on marble and etching, you will find a ton of results. Basically, marble (and limestone and travertine) are calcium-based stones. Anything acidic (and I believe anything basic as well? - basically anything not pH neutral) causes a chemical reaction in the stone that we know of as etching. The only way to prevent it is to avoid contact with anything non-pH neutral. I would recommend testing all of your typically-used bathroom products on a marble sample so that you can see what etching looks like. You should of course also seal the marble to prevent staining, but sealing cannot prevent etching. Here and here and here are some pages from Granite Gurus discussing etching and staining on marble. I would also recommend doing a search in the kitchens and baths forums on marble and etching. A lot of people have asked questions about this and a lot of people with experience have answered.

You need to redo your square foot calculations. The backsplash isn't free and takes material. If you're just doing the back (and not sides) that's more than 2.5 square feet. If you're doing the sides also, it doubles the amount to almost 5.5 additional square feet. The cutouts cost money too. How much are they charging for those? $150 each? $250 each? Also the edge finishing. What edge did you choose? And how many sides? If your vanities are freestanding, they need to finished the ends which they will probably charge extra for (typically only the front edge is included in the sq ft price). So you have between 18-2/3 - 21-1/3 sq feet. Plus cutouts. Plus edge finishing (possibly extra, possibly not). Plug in the unknowns (to us) and now you can tell us the real price per square foot. Your Statuary price is almost the same as Linelle's carrara price. She's in a higher cost area, but how many years ago was that? Stone prices have gone up quite a bit here (Michigan) since the upturn in the economy and housing market. Someone made a comment that remnants are pieces that someone else has already paid for. That isn't necessarily true. Where I am, you pay only for the square feet that your countertops measure, not for a slab or any waste between the pieces that are cut from the slab. But even if that were true, why should it matter to you? When you rent a car, do you expect a discount because the person before you returned the car a few hours early? After all, they've already paid for the car for those hours so you shouldn't have to, right?

How did you resolve this? I am contemplating the same issues with my kids' bathroom remo.

Cook's Kitchen thanks. I knew what MDF was but never thought that it would be described on the side of the packaging as all wood construction. And I've never considered plywood all wood construction. Funny thing is I have a tendency to opt for MDF over plywood even though I think plywood is supposed to be an upgrade over MDF. I've just seen one too many cheaply made plywood cabinets. I ended up getting a cultured marbled sink from Lowe's. I love the white on white look. I'm really not a fan of granite but I wanted to be able to explore all my options in case I came across something I just couldn't live without. Now, I'm waiting on the new faucet to come in (Lowe's) and the flooring (Tarkett vinyl through Carpets to Go), then I should have everything on hand so I can finish up this project. Since this bathroom wasn't a planned remodel and the first time I've done anything like this, I've learned a lot. When I do the master bath, which before this I had planned to do next year, it should be a different experience since 1) that is a planned remodel and I already know / have ideas of what will happen in there and 2) will take the knowledge from redoing the bathroom that Mom uses and apply it there.