I work for a builder so I have seen it many many times. I am with you about the texture, it looks too much like a wall for my taste. However, most of our customers that have it done have it stamped and stained with two different colors. The stamped spray deck we typically do looks more like rock. As far as chipping goes, we don't really have an issure with it except for springtime hail. Customers will call us over the tiniest imperfections about decks, but they paid good money for it so it's expected to last. I've noticed hail that is baseball size or larger will chip it. Here is a link that might be useful: stamped and stained spray deck pics

I have fantasy brown countertops, midnight espresso cabinets, but my paint is a blue gray. The fantasy brown I have has a lot of gray in it so it looks great together. It depends a lot on the slabs. Some are very very brown with not much gray and white, some have very little browns but a lot of gray and white. Take a look at the very long post here labeled calling all fantasy brown owners. Lots of pictures of our kitchens to look at. Also you can search on houzz for fantasy brown with gray cabinets.

We honestly don't use our freezer all that much, but it does get some use. So, we didn't want to sacrifice prime real-estate in the kitchen. Also, our kitchen is two floors above the garage; so placing the freezer into the garage would have been awkward in day-to-day use. As others have found out, going for a non-standard configuration is expensive. But apart from the cost, I would always do it again. The result works so much better for us. We have a 36" counter-depth all-refrigerator. It's the main appliance for food storage, and we couldn't be happier with it. This type of fridge is simply a much better configuration and makes it so much easier to keep things organized neatly. We also have undercounter freezer drawers at the perimeter of the kitchen, where they are accessible when needed, but where they don't get into the way. Works great for us. Splitting the two appliances made our kitchen and the slightly challenging floorplan much more functional. In the garage, we have a commercial all-refrigerator that is used when unloading groceries from the car. Very happy with that decision. And buying a commercial model made things more affordable while still getting excellent built quality. The only downside with this overall configuration is that we don't have an ice-maker in the freezer drawers. But we have another small fridge/freezer in the in-law kitchen. Every couple of weeks, we use it to make ice cubes and then transfer them to a storage container in the freezer drawers. Our family doesn't use that much ice, so this works fine for us. But others might need a different solution (there are drawers with ice makers, but the ice maker takes up a lot of space).

I bought my Fisher and Paykel refrigerator in 2016 and still love it. In fact, I'm buying another one for a condo I just purchased as part of the kitchen remodel. I've had no trouble at all with it. As far as whether GE and F&P being owned by the same company make them the "same" - No, they still have separate manufacturing divisions, just as you'll find Haier appliances as part of the same company. Both F&P and GE were in financial trouble when Haier bought majority ownership to become a giant whitegoods corp. They aren't like the old Kenmore (Sears) brand that changed manufacturers all the time depending on who Sears contracted with to produce their appliances.