willowdecor: (at least you won and paid 1/2 for your countertops: that's a plus wow! (fyi: that is why we don't take american express! lol: customer always wins!) they should have NEVER charged your card 3 days before install! (I charge cc after I get a Job Completion sheet turned into me by customer stating ok to do so!) gaps: well: have had to deal with fixing terrible 1/2 installed jobs from installer who disappeared off the face of Earth leaving 1/2 installed kitchen. We "DOUBLE durrocked the wall: to fix gaps. They left a hugh mess: customer didn't have running water for 90 days in her kitchen. We installed within one day after she came to us. (went to stone yard same day she walked in our showroom: matched 3cm Portofino Gold as best as could be: moved it: fabricated it after measure same day and installed December 23rd 2007 for her 25 person Christmas party!) WOW! Right! (also: just to let some of you know: when we install: we usually rip out the sheetrock and countertops. then install countertop: granite is 99% level and even: Walls & cabinets and floors are not always level or even. So my tile installers who do the backsplash fix "problems" after the fact: to hide wall issues and CABINETS THAT ARE NOT ALWAYS LEVEL! I make customer sign a disclaimer regarding gaps when we are "not installing" their splash. When you keep existing splash: there might be problems with gaps due to countertop install) It's possible. Just giving heads up on issues that can happen during an install. ***If they cut your countertop wrong! Put your FOOT DOWN: don't let them glue the countertop to your cabinet and tell them to take it back! buy new slab and re-fabricate correctly: once countertop is glued: they are going to try and "talk" you into keeping it the way it is. (how can people stay in business: installing this way: they move around and change their names! LOL) Everyone makes mistakes, but a good installer/business will fix the problem correctly! MISTAKES COST MONEY and fabricator ends up doing a kitchen for FREE: that is why they are usually careful! Marble can be expensive and so are exotic granites! You want your kitchen to look great and have it look right! You deserve that!

Sparklingwater, we used Fernando's marble shop in Rockville md. They came recommended From our builder. They are family owned and the owner learned his trade in Portugal. They had beautiful slabs. We are getting our counter tops installed this week. It was about $2,800 for 28 sq feet, plus two 5 feet caps and about 5 feet of 8 inch high backsplash, eased edge. We chose a 3 cm white venato marble. They hone all their countertops as part of the process. They had beautiful Carrara also, 3 cm. good luck!! Edit: the Carrara was priced about the same as the marble we chose, maybe a bit less. We told them our budget and they showed us the Venato and the Carrara. Here is a link that might be useful: Fernando's marble shop This post was edited by kitchen_maman on Sun, Mar 31, 13 at 11:09

I'm just going to talk about a coupla things. This is just talk about issues and trade-offs, not criticism. So this is about a half-thought out plan that I made up just so it wasn't critiquing an existing one. I'm drew in detail both cleanup and baking prep. I am showing two blue lines that illustrate routes used with or without a prep sink. The rest of this is long and highly opinionated. Ok. So, let's start with cleanup. We've mostly all said that a 4 foot deep cleanup area is a bit much for "cleaning the clean up area" so this steps it back into the window a foot - yielding a three foot deep space which might be reachable (depending on god, the universe, your height, sink gismos and everything). The other thing it does is create a nice wide aisle around the open dishwasher - when duffers pass through on their way to Doritos or a beer or whatever, the human dishwasher can ignore them. A pass through area with double sided upper cabinets is entirely possible, but you need to put a ledge or a ledge plus a shallow base cabinet in the dining room side for "sit down" space for people getting dishes from the cabinets. I'm having some trouble understanding your friend's criticism about stuff being on the wrong side. With double sided glass fronted wall cabinets, you need to remember that the entire contents will be plainly visible. I find that leads to very few junky places and more order for me. The cabinets are only about 12-13" deep, so its is difficult to think of what would be piled up in front of your plates or soup bowls. Perhaps they were thinking of base cabinets? Food prep (of any sort) has a flow to it. Stuff from the ref usually goes to the sink, unless its a snack - in which case it either moves towards the dishes or the microwave or both! From the sink, or directly from the ref if you belong to my tribe, it travels to the prep counter area to be joined with water, prep tools, pantry stuff and pots or baking pans which are then put on the range or in the oven or the micro. The process may later need to drain something or slide stuff out to cool or be stired frequently. The messy leftovers go to a disposal or trash or compost. The packaging goes to the trash or recycling. The dirty pots and prep tools go to cleanup. So the arrangement of the appliances is important, and the positioning of water is vitally important. So, the cleanup seems good because you don't need to walk much at all - just for putting pots or prep stuff back. Trash isn't going to be optimally positioned (unless you're a garbage disposal person) caused it would need to be under the sink, probably forcing you to keep the under sink door open. Cooking is a little bit freaky. This is mostly because of the relative locations of the ref and the pantry and the prep area. You have one of those places where some of the spacial relations are difficult. Since all of the dry storage is across the hall, it's nice if the ref is closer to it BUT the ref can't be placed directly on the hall wall. It probably won't be able to open completely, leaving you to wrestle with it when you want to clean it. It's also not perhaps the best idea to bury your only ref inside the prep zone as it is the most frequently accessed appliance - particularly by those other folks who live in your house. Adding cabinets between the wall and the ref push the pass through up towards the sink. In every iteration of a corner plan with the sink in the bay - the sink or the dishwasher have an issue. Either the sink is too close to the corner and can only be used from one direction AND/OR the dishwasher is on the wrong side. If we reversed the sink and dw in the sample plan, the sink is better positioned, but the dw is not as it opens in front of the cabinets you like to use for dishes. Unloading becomes a two-step, first to the counter and then the cabinets after you close the door or drawer. In the ones with a corner and the range where the ref are traded, the dishwasher opens between the range and sink potentially causing serious accidents as its possible to turn from the range and trip over the dishwasher. The ref is shown near the sink. You can reach the peninsula counter to sit things down, which mitigates the distance somewhat, but it still might be crazy-making... Is it more crazy making than having people constantly walking behind you? Since the pass-thru moved up closer to the sink, I could put the range where shown. Its got counter on both sides. It won't prevent others from using the sink, altho others can prevent you from sliding over to dump a colander. Adding a prep sink kills the dark blue triangle that goes into the cleanup zone - always a good thing but really good in this example because that pot full of water and pasta can now pretty much always be drained without getting someone to move first. Other crazy stuff: ---- A person needs at least two feet of counter edge. If they are adults, it might feel slightly squished in. ---- The overhang for counter height seating should be at least 15". This isn't for the depth of the stools - its for knees. ---- The peninsula is tempting to hang a wall cabinet, but if you do, the second stool will be kinda difficult to use because the wall cabinet will be in the seated person's face and the last door is guaranteed to hit them in the head! ---- The ref location is hard to plan. There are two kinds of people in this world. The ones who get everything they are going to use out of the ref at once; and then there's my tribe. My tribe kinda fetches this, that and the other thing outta the ref all during the prep and cooking process. People say they can learn to be the other type, but I don't know. ---- Same thing with the views and prep-or-cooking-or cleanup. To me, windows are the most wasted in front of a cleanup area. Not the light wasted, but the views! When I'm doing cleanup, I'm looking at the dishes, not the view. And with dishwashers, I'm not in front of that window for very long. I think windows are more useful at prep or cooking (both!). ---- Also consider the social aspects of any plan. In this plan, you are oriented to the family room, and primarily the family room windows. You'd have a side view of the bay window - a front view would happen while rinsing veg - maybe. When you're cooking or doing cleanup, you'd be turned away from others. In all of the "real" designs, other things happen in your interactions with people and the views. Be sure you end up with the ones you'd like.

I am in the central valley in California and I have been getting granite bids for a little over 100 sq ft of counters including an island. Will have an undermount sink. Granite is creme bordeaux with a bullnose edge. Prices have ranged from $3975 to $6500. Interestingly some of the ones using the prefab out of China which does somewhat concern me are not the lowest. This is because of the larger island that requires a fabricated slab. I was all set to go with the $5000 job which meant I was buying 3 slabs and hiring the fabricator seperately. The fabricator is the one who did the kitchen for the guy selling the slabs. I would have about 1/2 slab left over in this case. That is when I got the low bid which at first really caused me to wonder. I had not seen their shop so I went by. I was really surprised they actually have a showroom. Got to talking to them and found they just opened this location and had another location somewhere in the Bay area. Their displays did look good. They do their own fabricating from full slabs and don't use any prefabs. Now I have a quandry.