Hi Kercove, The slabs of granite are from the Granite Depot in Westborough Ma. I worked with Paula. A wonderful place. They moved so many slabs until I found the ones I liked. She even held a bunch just in case I changed my mind. The installer is a company that has been in business for years. But I have not had them actually install yet. So I can not say how they do with seams or edges etc... I am really nervous after seeing all the terrible issues on our Garden web site. The actual install does not happen for another 10 days. However I love how they have worked with me so far. They have truly helped me in every way with the counters. I believe the father Brice has been doing this for years as everyone knows him. I have been working with the son Jesse. BFR and Associates I hope it is okay that I put their website on here. http://www.bfrandassociates.com/ They are located in Manchester NH but they do jobs in Maine, Canada, Mass, VT I have been searching for a long time. They are not the cheapest but they are not the most expensive either. They are a fair price for the job. I have also looked at Ripano but they were too high. I looked at Holbrook Granite they seemed nice but I had no recommendations about them. They do not even show their work on line. I liked BFR because I could actually go and see the countertops in person. BFR does commercial work. I also checked out Spencer Granite but thought they might be too far away from my actual home. I also visited the Boston Granite Exchange. I do not know if they install or just sell slabs. They have lovely slabs but the lighting is terrible in there so it is hard to see up close. I believe but do not know this for a fact that the Boston Granite Exchange prices their slabs higher than other places. I only heard this in passing from another customer. Not sure this is the truth or not. But in my case my installer found the stone cheaper at The Grantie Depot. Their lighting was much nicer to inspect slabs too. I hope this helps. I wish I could afford Christopher Peacock in Boston. I would have had them do my entire kitchen. :) Good luck. ~boxerpups

Hmm... Granite fabricator is now saying that "Black Strype" and Jet/virginia mist all come from Brazil and are the same stone just through a different distributor. I thought that Virginia mist came out of Virginia here in the US. I believe it was originally mined near Culpeper, Virgina. Is this not the case? Sorry for all the post, I just want to figure out if it is the same type of granite for when I go discuss other issues with the fabricator.

jayhawk: Hope you see this before you head over there today. I brought DH over there yesterday to see the slabs and look for alternatives. My 2 slabs are on the front of the stack - they have my last name (Hill) written in sharpie on the top right edge. You'll have to get them to move the slabs to see the others. There are 6 there including mine (they told me 8 came in - I never got a chance to ask if there are 2 more). Again, from what I saw, they all look very similar. Also, I'm not sure if the Stone Collection requires reservations on Saturdays, but some of the stone yards do (I think Arizona does, for instance). If you get there early, you're probably ok. Our cabinets are not in either, but it sounds like we are a week or two ahead of you. Ours are scheduled to be installed the last week of May with granite templating the first week of June. I think the timing is pretty darn good if we want to attempt to both get our granite out of a total of 3 slabs. But - if you reserve slabs today, certainly reserve 2!! If we decide we can work this out and use 3, we can figure out which one of the 4 we have reserved we don't want to use. They will hold reserved slabs for 14 days. I'm going to give you my email (encoded), and if you'd like, go ahead and contact me via email and we can attempt to work out the 3 slab thing. My fabricator is Joel Csotty (his last name is not misspelled - it's pronounces soty with a long o) with Colorado Stonecrafters in Longmont. The Longmont location is a bummer if you want to be there when he lays the templates (I do!), but I think I only have to go up there once. He is my GCs favorite stone guy, and I've got to admit that I haven't checked out his work or anything, I just went on the GCs recommendation. He got me the jet mist here in CO and I won't abandon him for anything at this point - I feel I owe him a big one. I don't think he has a website - it's a pretty small operation (I did go up there one time to pick a couple of jet mist samples, on the way to skiing). Like you, I want honed and Joel will hone my pieces for me. Do you already have a fabricator you are working with? Here is the email encoding (sorry - I am gloriously spam-free and want to keep it that way). My first name is Linda and my middle name is Louise. My last name is earlier in this post. email is first name dot middle initial dot last name at comcast.net. No pressure for sure, but contact me by email if you want. They have lots of leathered cambrian black at the Stone Collection. We got a price group list from them when we were there yesterday and it says price category 4 (out of 5, then it goes to 'custom' and 'exotic'). Non-leathered cambrian black is cat 3. Jet mist is not on the list yet, so I don't know what cat it is. It seems that the Stone Collection leans toward the more dramatic/exotic granites and it might be that their prices are a little higher. I'm pretty sure I saw leathered Cam Blk at Arizona, too, which is not too far from Stone Collection. Might be cheaper there? Sorry for the long post - Hope your search goes well today!

I put honed jet mist in my kitchen in 2007, sealed it every six months or so and enjoyed it until we moved four years later. We had a few small etch marks on the counter that looked like pencil eraser but they were only seen up close and at a certain angle. We are not neat freaks but did wipe the counters each night after dinner so we never had any spills sitting on the counter overnight. Do you have another sample you can seal? I might have read here that the grit that the fabricator uses for honing might effect how the stone absorbs but hopefully people who are better educated than I can weigh in.