Thanks Katie! There is no beading on my cabinets, they are just simple shaker cabinets. The folks at the cabinet place kept asking me if I wanted a bead on my doors/drawers or stiles on my drawers and it became a joke because I would say "no that's too smoochy for me!" So they quickly learned that if it came to my kitchen it needed to be plain, plain, plain! I like to think that since I'm simple minded, I need a simple kitchen! You'll love the GM Original, it has so much personality, though I've never met a soapstone I didn't like! My glass is probably my favorite part, well one of them, since I drove to Virginia to pick up antique windows and had the glass removed and cut to size. It turned out to be cheaper than reproduction glass and it was from an area where my Mom was from, so it has special meaning for me. Thanks you guys for the birthday wishes for my son, I'll pass along your well wishes! I can't believe my baby is going to be 17...does this mean I'm getting old? Say it *ain't* so!! Kat :)

We live in a rooftop apartment in an old warehouse on the Brooklyn waterfront which enters into the kitchen. Jerzeegirl - Thank you for the kind words. The floor is 12x24 Panaria Magnific Marmara porcelain tile - very affordable, I might add. Its veining is close to the carrara marble basket weave on the wall. Most people think the floor is marble. Find them here: http://panaria.webhat.it/english/indoor/marbles-and-stones/magnifica/25/ fredanj - Thank you, too. This kitchen replaced another IKEA kitchen that was 20+ years old and was still in fine shape - tastes change. This particular line is the Adel medium brown cabinets with some pieces (the island) in Rubrik stainless (limited choices). IKEA has online design tools and a good staff to help you put together a kitchen - it's a process. They also can recommend installers. I normally would do this myself but my contractor had a team (two guys) who mounted them in 2 days - much better. The soapstone is from M. Tiexiera in Hackensack NJ (they are national) who - a) had a great selection of soapstone (this is important - we chose harder, less busier stone - b) had the most informed staff - you need to get educated on soapstone (GW is a good place, actually), and c) they under bid all other fabricators. Very pleased with them start to finish.

I'm no stone expert, but I'll take a shot at a wee bit of an answer. :-) In some ways, it doesn't need special skill. Lots of DIY's do a beautiful job with soapstone! I think maybe the difference is they really educate themselves about the "needs" of the stone, and they know in advance NOT to treat it like granite. Common mistakes from granite fabricators who treat it like it is granite: 1. Sealing or enhancing the stone. A great big no-no, and yet one the customer may have to really argue against (my fabricator didn't believe me). 2. Matching the seam color to the unoiled stone, rather than the oiled stone. Or making other color mistakes. An expert can make such an invisible seam that it is truly mind boggling to me! 3. Attaching the stone to the counters. This is where I really, really got scr*wed. Soapstone weighs something like 20lbs per sq. foot. You can actually just lay it on the cabinets with no "adhesive" at all. I think that most soapstone folks do use a bit of silicone to "hold" the stone. Again I am no expert. My clueless fabricator used super duper liquid nails type rock-hardening epoxy on mine, proudly saying "it wouldn't go anywhere." Yeah. Now that it has this 20" crack/fissure, it ISN'T going anywhere. At least not without destroying the cabinets in the process. That was a devastating mistake for my kitchen. 4. Finishing the surface: a. There can be issues with water marks and rings. Supposedly my counters are plagued by them because of the very poor finishing job that was done. A proper finish won't show water "stains. b. Soapstone can be hard to finish because the stone itself is so much softer than the mineral deposits found in it. If you sand the soapstone smooth, you can easily erode the stone, and expose the minerals within and you get this weird wavy texture. I've got a lot of this. In one spot, my counter feels like a rash!! Like skin with poison ivy. I personally can't figure out how to fix it. Folks here who DIY typically read up on this, and seek advice from our beloved Florida Joshua on what kind of sandpaper to use. To really bring out the best texture and performance and beauty of this unique takes knowledge and skill. Sure, most anyone with sandpaper can finish soapstone. But there really is a difference between any old finish ("Oh, that feels nice") and an expert "Oh-my-goodness-I've-never-felt-anything-like-this-stone-I-need-to-disrobe-and-roll-myself-all-over-this-silky-island-so-could-you-please-step-out-of-the-room-oh-my-goodness-i'm-in-love" finish that soapstone can elicit. It's all in the details. Any fabricator can give you a soapstone counter. A soapstone expert can give you a little slab of heaven! :-) francy

Thanks everyone for some interesting points and tangents. That is what 's great about this forum. Real experiences by people who are smart about what they say. It still amazes me how much misinformation I get from the "experts" in the field. As to your post, vrjames: given that it is the oils on one's hands that causes the fingerprints, I am assuming (just theorizing) that coating the stone with mineral oil will simply pre-empt the finger oil. By staining the entire stone, it won't show subsequent stains. PS I actually like the old Atari games. I mean, I understand that technology is great, and we've made incredible strides just in my lifetime, and we're better off than our grandparents in so many ways, etc., but I'm still kind of partial to simple materials, like wood and stone, and simple solutions like a little bit of oil and some elbow grease.