twogirls -- here are some pics of our soapstone and marble, I hope it helps. You have some beautiful choices. I was very worried about our "busy" marble, but now love it! I don't think our soapstone has quite as much drama to it as your slab shows, and, our veining is definitely white. Is your soapstone more green? These photos were a while ago, and not the best to show the veining near each other, but we are living large in this room now and most of the counters are covered up! You talked about the wonderful veining in your soapstone and wanting to capture that sense of it -- make sure your fabricator will set aside plenty of time to play with templating. I spent an entire morning with the fabricator and the three slabs we had to work with. I showed him which portions I wanted to highlight, he helped guide me, even getting the veins to match so they could go up the backsplash when they would be noticable. It definitely took some time b/c of the veining and I was so grateful not to be rushed through this decision. One thought I had when looking at your floor plan -- the butcher block end is what will be directly adjacent to the largest portion of soapstone and therefore possibly give each of the stone counters some "breathing" room?? I'm certainly no designer/decorator, just a thought...

Thanks! I just can't wait for everything to come together. We are getting cherry shaker style cabinets with a very slight stain (to just even it out a bit). Floors will be a cinnamon stained maple (took a while to figure out what floors will go with natural cherry cabs). We're doing a fairly large project, mostly ourselves, but contracting out some of the work. We're essentially taking a living room, dining "platform" (gotta love late 60's houses), a tiny kitchen and a den and converting it to a nice formal dining room, and a kitchen/great room. I'm waiting on the backsplash decision until everything's in and I can get a sense of what will work.

Thank you for these additional messages, especially the reassurance that all these "stars" will still come together ok. I hope I will swoon :) I wanted to ask what others think of sabjimata's comment about leaving the barroca unoiled? I've been playing around with my two barroca samples for these past couple weeks: I oiled one sample 1x and then let it go natural, but oil the other regularly to keep it dark. Like Sabjimata, I really prefer the unoiled: I love the softer coloring and it hides all the little scratches better. Scratches on the oiled really stand out and compel me to oil more. I think that could get really tiring. Here's my new problem-how to pick other colors when I don't know day to day if my counters will be light or dark? I'd like to leave the counters unoiled, but concerned that if I get the really big gouges/dents I'll need to sand/oil and then will find myself with dark counters when I planned all the color choices around light/unoiled. Oiling them really brings out the contrast of the caramel veins and only looks good with other warm/ivory/caramel tones around it which is a huge problem for picking out cabinet color-ugh Darker/oiled Barroca makes me lean towards darker warmer ivory (SW Antique White or BM Simply Irresistible/Palace White.) Unoiled Barroca looks better with lighter colors like BM Calming Cream or SW Dover White/Alabaster. Farrow & Ball House White seems to go equally well with both (probably because of all the extra pigment/undertones?), but while I've heard raves about F&B I'd prefer to stick to Benjamin Moore for our cabinet paint. The unoiled barocca looks classically beautifu/ crisp with a white apron front sink, but the oiled looks SO much better with the Kohler bisque sink (we're going to check out a Barclay biscuit sink today) I'm still really nervous about the softness-just carrying around my samples wrapped in a thick wool sock, the corners have chipped off of both samples. The Green Mountain Original PA that I banged around for months never got so much as a scratch. Yikes. Given the extra cost and long lead times for speciality bisque/biscuit colored sinks, I briefly considered yesterday going back to Original PA which goes better with everything so I could get a harder soapstone and a cheaper white sink! Seriously, even if we lost the deposit on our Barroca slabs to instead get the Original PA we'd still come out ahead because these specialty colored sinks are so much more expensive. Shoot me now.

The slab is called Mariana. This particular block is 106"x58"x 3cm. The slabs are serial numbered and barcoded, and ours are now in the computer as not available. This will replace white 6"x6" ceramic tile I put down in 1986, ...quite a change! Will be using a Blanco Silgranite Anthracite single compartment sink, another big change from Kohler porcelain double bowl we have now.