Thank you mj! I do love to bake and even though it is only the 2 of us I get carried away and then freeze for later :) My soapstone has one tiny chip in it from dropping a glass out of the cabinet. I forget it is there except when I wipe the counter. I have never oiled my stone. It has darkened naturally over time from all the use. I can see the difference as there is a piece of the same stone next to the ovens for a landing zone and it has remained very light. The stone in my sunroom has also remained light w/o oil. My soapstone is Green Mountain and looks exactly like the example on their website. Not many veins . It has proven to be very durable. I love it for kneading bread and rolling out dough as well as pasta etc. I think it is a perfect countertop choice but there are lots of threads here with differing opinions. I do believe that you have to have a quality product/install. Makes all the difference. I hope you will post pics of your baking soon !! c

Thanks so much for everyone's input. I would like to consider other brand 36" range that is around $2500, but I went to a few appliance showroom in San Francisco Bay Area, the cheapest brand is kitchen aid, I could not find those brand on the link. Deeageaux posts here. Does Anyone use Verona 36" dual fuel? It is only $2500. I can put the oven on my 4.5x8' island. I didn't think of cutting granite/ceaser stone cost for the cooktop. Somebody told me the oven in the range has a fan/venting system for the smoke, but wall oven doesn't. Is it true? I am thinking about induction cooktop. Not so sure yet. Rosie: only concern I have for oven not under the cooktop is the smoke(If I burn the food or grease from cooking the meat) from the oven can't be vented out by my hood. Do you find that is an issue?

It did not crack during delivery from the stone yard to the fabricator. It was not cracked on their lot while it sat there for quite some time. I went to match paint, tile, etc. MANY times. It was fine- other than the sticker that caused the stain. It is NOT marble or onyx - the delicate materials. It is quartzITE which is harder than all of the stones, thus what the stone people are highly recommending for kitchens to those who want the look of marble but the durability of granite. SO that's what I got. I felt confident in it's durability and it's gorgeous, so I paid a good bit more per square foot for that beauty and durability. He said the insurance covered dropping the slab on the crane when it arrived at his lot from the distributors. He said nothing about it cracking DURING fabrication. I interpreted the insurance as neither the distributor wanting to accept responsibility for transportation nor the fabricator - so they ask the customer to cover that gamble. That is what I thought I was declining. But the more I think about it, granite companies should have insurance for dealing with delicate materials and subcontractors that break them. Why should the customer Pay for their breaking of a slab!? If I ordered a 5000 dollar appliance and it arrived damaged, the appliance company replaces it. I'm not asked to pay extra insurance for transportation on a refrigerator! The warranty begins once the perfect condition refrigerator is on your property. NOTHING in life works this way. Something is wrecked. The person at fault has THEIR insurance pay for it. They broke it. He has yet to tell me exactly what happened, but during the day of installation I was at the house painting the laundry room and something secretive seemed to be going on in a different language amongst the subs. I think that it happened during fabrication. When offered the insurance, breaking during fabrication wasn't mentioned, and no I didn't think about that. And I would have thought that absurd. I thought he was referring to the changing of hands. I had never heard of such insurance so I knew nothing about it. I was already paying a lot of money for a slab that they told me was the hardest stone of all the stones. I was also agreeing to paying him a good bit more per square foot for its hardness and how that hardness affects his tools. So the distributor and the fabricator are telling me how HARD the slab is and charging me more for that hardness, so paying insurance for fragility didn't make sense. He presented the insurance as if it was for dropping it from the crane when moving from the delivery truck. Now if my 2 year old beat the slab with a hammer and broke it, would I expect the fabricator to pay for that? No. So how is this any different? My point about the range is that immediately when he informed me of the broken glass he offered to buy an entirely new range. I didn't ask for that. Those were the first words out of his mouth. So if he's willing to spend 2500 on my range then why won't he be comfortable forgoing the 2500 bill while I handle the range? That was my thinking because there's no way I'm trusting them to repair the crack. If I get the crack repaired, I will find another company to do it later on. This company does not have the leather finish tools. The slab came from Brazil with a leather finish - it was not fiished by the distributor or the fabricator. To the poster who said I seem worn down--- I AM I AM!!! Before this renovation we purchased a lot to build on. Had blue prints drawn up and ended up selling the lot to the builder that said he could build 2600sf in our budget then later says he couldn't after we spent 10,000 on the blue prints. It's all been very stressful! A lot of lessons learned but nevertheless, very stressful doing all this with 4 young kids. Not asking for sympathy. Just saying that I am worn down. However, I will fight this last fight. I'm not paying that bill. If he wants to replace the slab then I will pay him in full. But otherwise, the more I think about it in terms of other situations - appliances, furniture, windows, doors....The customer isn't left with a damaged item! Wish me luck. I'm calling him now to discuss our options. Hopefully we can come up with a solution that we are both comfortable with.

My sister put in side by side induction and gas and she has never once used the gas other than trying it out at first. Just sayin'. You need to read the specifications of the exact model of cooktop and oven that you are considering to see if they will work together. Just going by brand is not sufficient. I first had a gagg induction over a wolf oven and had to draw out all the clearances by hand on graph paper to be sure it would work. When the gagg died, I was very fortunate that the new Bosch worked in the same location - the older Bosch induction that was initially available when I put in the gagg might not have.