That marble's got chunks missing! I say you go get yourself a big chunk for an island, etch it BEFORE you install it, and just let it finish aging in place.

I love the personal-appearance-to-kitchen-counter analogies I've read today. I never thought about it that way, but it really makes sense.

Fori--I'm planning on etching my marble too before it is installed just to get that last bit of polishing off.

Lavender-- get scouring those salvage yards in your neck of the woods. That table is beat to heck!! I'm kinda picky and like things tidy, but I AM getting marble and AM just going to live with it. Can't wait!

Fori- Isn't that table beautiful? I'm going to start checking antique and second hand stores, to see if I can find anything similar.

Becky- Thanks for the link...and I love your response! It's so true, that some people will go to great lengths to keep everything from showing its age! :)

Sigh. But when the etching is in your foyer where a bottle of blueberry juice broke, so that it looks permanently like splatter, it's not so endearing. :(

11 million Italian families can't be wrong.

I've been to Italy five or six or seven times and have never been in a house with a marble countertop in the kitchen. Even my cousin, who built a house that looked like it was burgled from the Vatican, didn't have a marble countertop. I think the kitchen countertop was the only stretch of non-marble in the entire house except the bed. I've seen tile, stainless steel, mystery metal, wood, plastic of various sorts, and other random things, but marble only in commercial establishments.

(P.S., there are no "Tuscan" kitchens in Tuscany, either.)

The guy who worked with me to select and fabricate my counters said he got into stone work, from accounting, after spending time in Europe. When I talked about wanting marble, he didn't try to talk me out of it at all -- he told me about a French chef he stayed with who had a very old, and stained, marble counter that he said was gorgeous.

breezy, you mean there is another person like me as far as looks?! It's probably as good a way as any to determine your kitchen personality : ) .By the way, you can get marble honed instead of polished...

pllog, I'm sorry. That *would* be awful.

marcolo, there shouldn't be Tuscan kitchens outside of Tuscany, either.

Becky

Becky--my 4cm Carrara is honed, but not as honed as I'd like. My sample etches easily. I'd like to get rid of that last bit of shine and then seal and let it age from there.

Okay, just to be fair, a "Tuscan kitchen" is an American decor trend from the 1990's that coincided with a lot of other "Tuscan" design elements being used in home decor. There are whole stores full of "Tuscan" light fixtures, railings, furnishings, etc. If you look at them, they get their design influences from things you can see in Tuscany, down to the vines. It's not how a Tuscan would decorate, or anything specifically that you could find in Tuscany, but decorating with references to various elements that one can find here or there throughout the Tuscan region.

It's like when YSL did the whole Russian peasant thing in the 1970's. No Russian peasant, even without the stringencies of the USSR would have worn anything like those clothes, but there were various design cues that evoked the feeling of Russian peasant life while being 100% obviously expensive French clothes.

P.S., Thanks, Becky, for the fellow feeling...

Going back to the quotation that Lavender Lass included in the first post about life leaving marks on things - it is the whole Velveteen Rabbit geisteit -- the idea of being burnished by love, or time or use.

There is an aesthetic philosophy called "wabu sabe" -- the idea that things that are crafted out of genuine organic materials will age in a beautiful way. The fringes on a hand knotted wool rug will soften and fray, as will the cuffs of a linen shirt. Wood will get some dings, will lighten or darken. And isn't that why we treasure a beautifully worn in pair of denim jeans? That's what honed, heavily used marble is all about, and old, timeworn wood as well. (and that's one of the reasons that honed marble and wood with a bit of rusticity look so good together).

That's why we freak out though when the polished marble gets etched -- it is now not consistent with the rest of the new-looking and un-marked elements in the room.

lavender lass, go to "everestmarblect.com" click on "marble" then look for "azul cielo." The picture doesn't nearly do it justice, but when I was there last Friday and saw it, I thought of you! It is a lovely shade of blue with some small white cloud parts and pieces of green quartz chunks (I don't know how to decribe things like that very well) and it glistens in the light. It is beautiful - if you can find it where you live you have to go see it.

There is an aesthetic philosophy called "wabu sabe" -- the idea that things that are crafted out of genuine organic materials will age in a beautiful way. The fringes on a hand knotted wool rug will soften and fray, as will the cuffs of a linen shirt. Wood will get some dings, will lighten or darken

Anyone who expects that of marble should probably not get it. It's more like water rings on antique furniture.

This post makes my mind swim in several dirrent directions (all good) ----

L-lass: good luck with your table search. This store sell table bases only (though not listed on their site)and a few remind me of what you covet - http://www.arhaus.com/tables_dining/

I got my carrrea installed last week and was explaining to DS (9 yrs) about the composition of marble (and soapstone on the other counters) and about the fact that acid substances will etch on marble. Th next day, while making a sundae, he asked me with a worried look if "ice cream was acidic". I have always planned on not "baby-ing" my marble, and I felt terrible that he was so worried.

One of my closest friends lives in Florence and her house is hardly the stereotype of "Tuscan." (try Ikea). Reminds me of another friend - from Paris - who I was skyping with the other day about my TKO. Told her I was getting french doors - which I then had to explain!

Here is a link that might be useful: nice dining tables

My marble isn't on a countertop, but in the front hall and powder room, and it's a polished crema marfil.

I was completely ignorant of what to expect from it and how it would etch and scratch, but the tiler was here, it came by mistake, looked gorgeous, and had it installed after a moment of "what the heck, it's beautiful, put it in" (decide in haste, repent at leisure...)

For the first year, I kid you not, I was down on my hands and knees every other day inspecting for scratches and etches. They seemed to appear no matter how much I swept and nagged about shoes in the house.

Then I started thinking about any grandchildren that I might have, any dogs that might come into my life again, and parties that I want to have, and gave up the idea of perfect marble, and embraced the living that was going on in my house. Besides, it abuts wood, which has its own life - they'll age together!

I know a floor isn't a countertop, but expectations must be managed nevertheless.

Plllog, sorry about the blueberry splatter. Is it possible to replace the affected tiles?

I got strongarmed into a polished Calacatta tile for my tiny bathroom. The first time we tried to clean it, we dug out an old spray bottle of Marble & Stone cleaner. I spritzed it on, and turned around to discover that somebody had made off with my paper towel roll. By the time I retrieved it, the cleaning fluid had sat on the floor in splotches for about a minute. It etched.

The one thing I used to love about my tiny bathroom was the brilliant afternoon sunlight. Now, the light makes the floor look like someone has just copiously peed on it. I keep the door mostly shut now.

Years ago my mom's cleaning lady took to the marble front hall with some sort of cleaning product that turned it from polished to honed in the time it's taken to write this.

She only told me this last year when I started pissing and moaning about some tiny sratch - she had the right attitude right from the start.

But I know what you mean about the sunlight on polished marble - nothing looks more beautiful (minus the marks, of course lol)

When I start wandering into obsessive territory, I remember that the most etched marble is STILL marble, and IMHO is more beautiful than anything else.

I spent a few weeks in Italy this past fall, and saw it in every bathroom in every place we stayed - magnificent!

marcolo, for what it's worth (probably not much), I've spent the last 17 years in this 60-year-old house with, in the kitchen, a vinyl sheet floor that was ugly even when new (white, pink, and gray) and of course my husband was aghast at the idea of removing "perfectly good" flooring just because it was ugly. It is also poor quality, and every dropped item, from forks and knives and especially the cans of food my kids liked to make towers with when they were little, made horrible brown rents in the vinyl. But each rent and dent tells a story, especially of my children's toddlerhood!

Most of the countertop is marble "look" Formica, and doesn't look nearly as nice, and hasn't held up as nicely, as the little piece of butcher block my husband made out of the old school gymnasium floor on one side of our O'Keefe & Merritt, and on the other side the old piece of stone that used to be the newspaper office's back step! So the marble and Ikea butcherblock, and hardwood kitchen floors in the new house will be a huge step up for me, and in the end, I'd rather have dings in the hardwood than on the vinyl flooring, because in the end it's wood rather than vinyl. I have an antique French buffet with marble top, and it came with a water ring on top, but to me it just adds to the history. Any other material just wouldn't look or feel the same to me. It's magnificent.

I still remember taking delivery of my first real coffee table a few years out of college. It was mahogany, from Altman's, and I couldn't wait to polish off the dust from the delivery truck. A friend thought she would help and instead of spraying the cloth, as I'd always been taught, she sprayed the table directly. No matter how much we both rubbed with the cloth, the wood looked as if it had been sneezed on, and did for years. I still have that coffee table, and it has never looked as pristine as it did when it was first delivered, but it has lovely patina and personality. Which for a farm family with three kids is fine...

People have very hard views on what is beautiful and what is not when it comes to marble. I, like you, think it's wonderful as it ages. We had ours put in last Friday on our perimeters and I have seen a few etches here and there (I thought they were fingerprints at first). DH said, "well, it's like the first scratch on a car. You get one, you think about how that kinda sucks, and then just move on." I love it. It shows life.

The kitchen at the villa we rented in Tuscany had a long stretch of 100+ year old marble counters. It was obvious hwere people had prepped food, poured wine, stacked dishes, chopped meats, etc. just by the aging of some parts of the stone. The white background had dulled to a creamy orange in some spots. Everything was etched. And it was quite beautiful.

When the templater came to my house for the countertops, I showed him a slab of white marble we have on a coffee table. There was a lot of discussion about how much honing I wanted, and I said I wanted the slab to look like *this.* He looked at the coffee table and then looked at me, "So you want it to look old?"

My marble doesn't look old but after 9 months or so, it is getting there. In spots. I love it. I even have some chips and, on the polished part, a brutal etching from a melting ice pop.

I shared this link before but will share once again. It is pictures of Gaudi's kitchen in Spain. Mmmmm....

Here is a link that might be useful: gaudi / marble

I have crema marfil on my entry and powder room floors. We had to tear out part of the powder room and dig through the slab to find a plumbing problem that had apparently been brewing since the house was built. I am still trying to find the right thing to redo the floors with (we plan to put hardwoods in the entry and much of the downstairs). I can tell by the hollow sound that I have some loose marble tiles in the entry and I have considered trying to pull them out an patch the powder room floor -- but honing them instead of re-polishing them. Haven't decided yet.

Crate & Barrel has a lovely marble topped kitchen island. Not as lovely as that one but it was really pretty in person. Has a bottom shelf too to hold pots. They also have a similar style in a table.

Here is a link that might be useful: Marble Topped Island

Whoops! An extra "h" got placed in the htp in the address. Here's a photo of the pretty marble island. Just go to www.crateandbarrel.com and search for marble island and will come right up. It's $999.99.

oh, you need a table similar to my kitchen table. We bought it at an auction in Belgium.