Regarding discoloration around the sink, thank you so much, Cheri, Springwater, Cleo, and Donka! Your comments put my mind at ease...it seems the variety of solutions are pretty simple when there is a bit of splotching. I'm not interested in keeping the original light grey, but of finding some compromise between that and the freshly oiled, darkest look (unless the darkest look is a charcoal as opposed to black). Scoll down a bit on this thread to see a soapstone that is very appealing to me: http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/kitchbath/msg0110311030000.html?11 While it's perhaps a tad darker than I like, there's a certain "warmth" to her soapstone or maybe the word is softness (and yes, I want a harder variety but that soapstone looks...ok maybe cozy is the word?). ;) I haven't completely ruled out caesarstone as an alternative but I'm still hoping to find the best compromise in soapstone. AB honed granite just has too many issues. Ellabee, thank you for being so helpful! I appreciate the info you shared on harder varieties! Re. finding my old posts, I've been googling and saving my threads but the problem is that for whatever reason, when I click on them later, I can't respond to those that have been kind enough to respond - if I do it that way. So then I feel so rude for not being able to reply! But I get these windows of opportunity (3 small kids so always falling asleep at the laptop when I DO have time to do this stuff!) and those windows seem to close before I can figure all this stuff out. Thanks very much for the link to the other thread on NW posters that have soapstone! I've saved that link as well. I hope I didn't complain about people not providing email addresses (what whiner!)...but yes I know I wrote something about it. It's funny - I was sure mine was set up and thanks to YOU, I see that wasn't the case. So I hopefully fixed that now. Thanks again everyone! I'm *hoping* to have my 3 countertop/backsplash choices narrowed down to at least 2 by tomorrow, and 1 by Monday night!!! My contractor emailed me and said let's get on it. SO HARD deciding between soapstone, stainless and wood for countertops! They're all so beautiful if done right (and with the apron sink, classic faucet, a very nice backsplash and wood floors)! :)

one -- We ended up with a deep sill at our sink window, not because we bumped out the wall but because the wall had to be furred out, four inches into the kitchen. Our sill is about 8" deep. There's a 3" soapstone backsplash and about 3" of painted apron below the sill. We considered using soapstone for the sill, but didn't because it would have looked so much heavier/darker. Also, the fabricator balked at making the narrow little "ear" piece of the sill shape, that extends out to each side, without breaking the stone. Given the water concerns (from plants and splashing from the sink) we chose to make the sill and apron out of vinyl Azek boards. Once painted, it looks just like the wood on the rest of the window trim. By the way, I wouldn't recommend putting double hung windows over a counter. It is hard to reach them to open and close. and two -- Here's what the boxed-out windows look like in the living room and dining room of our 1920's bungalow. The picture is of the living room, but the dining room is the same, though only three windows wide. The kitchen window trim was modeled after these. The ten inches you have sounds like more of a perch than a seat, I think. Ours are comfortable, at 15" deep. (This is, far and away, EVERYONE'S favorite spot in the house.) They have no back, though, and they're 26" off the floor, so they're not really suitable for dining. If you were to lower the seat and add a comfortable seat back below the window panes, it could work very well on one side of a dining table, especially if you built the bench part into the room enough inches to give you a comfortable seat depth.

Wow, its great to see feedback on some Portland providers. We have been giving our kitchen a makeover as well, it all started with me falling for a Bluestar range...which then made it apparent the rest of the kitchen needed work to make it stand up to the range. We have our original cabinets from when the house was built 80 years ago, we did have to resize a few of the wall cabinets as they hung too low and made the counter useless. They had been refaced at some point with some lightly stained maple, and after getting quotes to paint our small kitchen cabinets in the range or $1800 we painted them ourselves with Miller primer/paint. I performed all of the electrical work, we just had to have a contractor run the gas line as we originally had a wretched electric stove. We are now at the counter decision, and are leaning towards soapstone. We got one bid and it just seemed way too high for the amount of work soapstone takes (no polishing or sealing), I just don't see how it can have $1800 in labor if I compare the cost of "DIY" from Teixeira cost. We have two straight counter tops, nothing fancy. I could screw it up and do it twice for what the quote we got was. If we had to pay the bid price of $3000+ for soapstone, I couldn't justify it. We have old cabinets, so they are a shallow depth...which means the counter is not "standard" and would have to be completely replaced if we ever replaced the cabinets. However the DIY price is a bit easier to consider. We also got our Bluestar at BASCO, but just the 30". They had a great deal going last year that saved $300 off the standard price. One complaint is that their delivery guys dented the side panel, pretty big mistake for guys that deliver high cost (heavy) appliances every day. This reminds me I need to call and finish getting credit for the damage as they offered. We found some soapstone slabs at Casa Bella and a few other spots around town, i think we found 3 warehouses with SS slabs in stock...I just hate how they can't tell you the price of it. It really seems like they have a racket going with the installers and can just make up whatever price they want. None of them would even tell us a "real" price, seems shady to me. Perhaps that is how stone is sold, but I'm not down with that game...just seems to leave too much room to just jack up the price if they don't like your fabricator or something.

Pluckymama: you should give Bucks County Soapstone a call about whatever it is that they use to treat the stone to keep in gray. They gave me large piece and we treated one side of it. I oiled the stone several times and the gray side stayed gray. My daughter now uses it as a trivet for her flat iron and the light side is still light. The stone was Black Venata. Casey: I'm fascinated that your stone uniformly darkened in less than a year. When I was at an appliance store with a live kitchen, the owner there told me he nevered oiled the soapstone counter he had there and it looked great; not near black but quite dark and uniform. Your counters look great! Could you tell me what you used to remove the oil?