hobokenkitchen: Isn't it lovely? It is likely a marble but I'm tempted nonetheless. I wasn't even looking at the blue tones but they already have my brain thinking about the blue-grey paint that would go on the walls to accent the slab. Slab 2 had even more of the blue-grey crystals while Slab 3 was bookmatched to 1. kailuamom: There are a cluster of slabyards in Hayward (Pietra Fina, Bedrosians, MSI, several others), San Leandro (haven't been), and the South SF/Peninsula (IRG in Brisbane, DaVinci in San Carlos, Tez in SSF & Burlingame, Fox in SSF - plus a few more I missed). In the Sac area, Medimer is in north Sac, just off I-80 near Fry's. Bedrosians is in Rancho Cordova, near Arizona Tile (also in Roseville). Domus and Natural Stone are near each other in South Sac. Planet Granite is a remnant specialist in north sac if you need just a slab or partial. There are many, many others scattered in and around NorCal.

If you can find enough suitable soapstone for all the counters, that would be my first choice--I think the dark counters will be perfect with the tone of your cabinets. And, you already have a marble slab to use for pastry. I'm linking a thread that has pics of a couple of GW members' kitchens, which are similar in tone. (And gorgeous, BTW.) **Edited to correct spelling of cotehele. My apologies. Here is a link that might be useful: GW thread with cotehele's and sombreuil_mongrel's kitchens This post was edited by mama_goose on Tue, Feb 19, 13 at 10:08

Everyone is asking for a porcelain slab fabricator close to where they live. What I did was search on Houzz to find local contractors with porcelain slab installations. Then viewing work that they did a few years ago for any cracking particularly around the sink faucets. I did not have good experiences asking the material vendor for contractors for other projects I have done.

Thanks for the Cipollino votes! Our walnut drawers will be done with a horizontal grain, do you think that would offset some of the concerns that the Cipollino is too linear given the movement of the grain in the walnut? The HenryBuilt site has plenty of examples of horizontal grain walnut cabinets and drawers.