Pharaoh x 3 for confused; please explain. I have a double bowl undermount stainless sink surrounded by a seamless single slab of silver sea granite. 11 years later it's still going strong. Not a crack or chip anywhere in the kitchen and I don't baby it. Hope I didn't jinx myself! Love the color and wish I could keep it for my remodel, but layout changes prohibit that. Dishdiva; how stressful! I'm glad they'll be replacing it. I'd insist on it. My sister experienced something similar. Big beautiful slab of granite for the island was installed with a crack. She saw it and made them replace it. Installed again and they used the same slab repaired with filling! Supposedly not noticed by the contractor when installed. Like sis wouldn't notice? Not a chance. She was livid, rightly so, and made them replace it with the new piece she picked out before the 2nd install. She has cream paint finish with a walnut island, Plain and Fancy I think and they were able to remove it twice without damaging the cabs and believe me if they did, she's have them replace those at their expense also. Hope that's reassuring. Love the color of your granite (green fan here) and what you've shown so far and I look forward to seing your finished kitchen. Please keep us posted. I've got my fingers crossed that 3 times the charm!

Ditto what Cher127 & Mfrog said. You want the cabinets & appliances at the finished floor height to have your cabinets + counter the correct height and to allow for sliding appliances in/out...which means a plywood floor under them (or the same flooring), not just blocks. Blocks might work OK if there are no appliances, but I think I would like the entire cabinet supported, not just the corners. Mfrog has a good suggestion to put the wood a little bit under the cabinets & under the movable appliances so there's no spillover of plywood (you never know even when there's toekick). For the refrigerator & range, since you can sometimes see several inches under them, either do what Mfrog did or have the wood go 5 or 6 inches under them. The other option, of course, is to put the wood under everything, then you don't need to worry about what the finished floor height is or what can be seen. Our kitchen has tile & we put it everywhere except in the bay window well behind the sink base (no cabinets or appliances in the well, just an empty well w/a frame built around it to support the granite that covered it.)

"What did they use on the walls? Maybe concrete board is an option." In Europe we plaster all walls in and out and then paint. Room dividing walls as well. Outside walls are between 1 ft. thick to 4 ft. thick and dividing walls are 5" to 6" thick, but some dividing walls in many older houses in Europe are up to 2-3 ft. thick, all made of concrete, blocks, stones and plaster, as well as re-bar (armatura). If there's an earthquake or a hurricane., the house just laughs it off. They should build like that in Oklahoma and the rest of the tornado valley, Florida etc. Those boards in my photo, that are above the ceiling studs are 1 1/2" x 8" for scale. I will still be doing the plywood thing, but not so sure if vinyl ceiling ok, but it sure should look good. When I asked for something to make my kitchen ceiling from at the construction materials store, they immediately showed me the vinyl "stripes" (joiners?) and told me they got enough of those, but when I came back to buy them they told me they need to be ordered and now its been a month and every time they would just say "next week". Thanks god its summer. Although winter in its 50s is not too bad either. Yes, if the roof leaks repeatedly I will be adding the sheathing and insulation under the tiles, which is quite expensive to do. Usually we just replace the cracked clay tiles, but sometimes the leak comes from... rain with high winds from an unusual angle. Big leak that rarely happens again. So I have a many little and not so little plastic "baths" to place in the attic to catch any leaks and to move them around as the geograohy of leaks changes with wind and rain direction. This is a mistake they did when they built this house without adding sheathing and insulation first and then the clay tiles. So as you can see such a clay roof is not easy to fix the leak as very often the leak changes location and sometimes the problem is power-washing the clay tiles from above as all the moss and dirt attracts water and then it leaks in unexpected places. In Azores or Portugal most roofs use clay tiles and each tile usually costs about 1€, so the entire medium sized house roof, the tile alone may cost just about 2000-3000€ or less than 1000€ if a house is small and has vertical stories instead. Wood part with installation for my garage 4x9 m (12 x 27 ft.) cost 2000€, then insulation and sheathing cost and the tiles cost about 700€. Unfortunately the kitchen is in the part of the house where the roof was done maybe 30 or 50 years ago, maybe some parts even a 100 years ago, so it's just wood studs, some concrete blocks, some stone and plaster and clay tiles on top of wood boards and the wood boards have gaps between them and so I can see the light through the clay tiles, but its not leaking in the kitchen area. As you can see construction buck here goes 5 to 10 times farther than in North America. Electrician 8€ to 10€ per hour. Help, (including skilled carpenter, brick layer, plumber) is 4€ to 7€ per hour, or a fixed amount sometimes. Regarding plywood getting wet, I will consider just using vinyl in case of a leak and its cheaper, but the vinyl will not feel very much like a solid ceiling, especially from within the attic, but it probably is a better solution for now than using plywood "under" the vinyl.

I used WAC undercabinet lighting, it comes with different temperature ratings for LED light color, so bright white is available (although I went with a warmer one as I do food photography). It is unobtrusive. My specific model has been discontinued, I think they are moving to being able to change light from bright white to warm white and back again in the same unit at owner's desire. (That was what I was told when I was last back at the lighting store.) You can get the casing that houses the unit in white, but for my needs I chose dark bronze. I really like this lighting.