Thanks everyone for the kitchen and mudroom compliments! The rest of the house is still a work in progress(empty DR and LR) I swear I need that designing for the sexes guy so we can finish furnishing our house! DH and I had a big spat the other day regarding a piece of artwork for the DR that I don't think will match what I'm planning for the room, but he loves...(It'll prob be a future post on the forum...LOL )

@enright5 - I know this is a few months after your initial posts, but I came across your posts while I was looking for photos of real life installations of Lyra and Lagoon Silestone. I can total relate to the original post. I love marble too and the look it provides, but it is not a good fit for my family. Knowing this I am not looking to trick people into thinking I have marble - just LOVE the general look and feel. SO what did you finally decide on?

These are my pics of my countertops placed Friday June 22, 2018. I cried looking at these seams. It looks so cheap. Fabricator explains that's the way it comes. I explained that I shouldn't be able to see the seams so clearly. It looks so unprofessional. They ended up taking them back to their warehouse. In hopes they say if it is quality control will try and fix it just to make it look better. Otherwise I will have to pay an additional fee for them to come out again to install. I just don't know what to do and if still looks the same. This is the first time I've replaced my counters in 24 years. I don't and can't live with it. looking at this for another 24 years. It looks so cheap and it really was not it's a lot of money to me. I hope fingers crossed that they will fix this problem. They never told me that there would be such seams. I thought the edges were done by a machine and it would be all one piece. I have read up on this and now understand there are seams. But now I do know that they should not look like this. If they are good fabricator you shouldn't be able to see them so clearly. I will find out next week what happens.

cailgirl123, it’s a tough decision to make! Our bathroom marble scratched immediately, but it’s a guest bath that isn’t used as often. I lift, not slide glass containers, etc. & wipe down water splatters after my grandkids use it. So, for us, it’s been a little over a year & I love it. Not sure about a heavily used or teenage-girls-with-all-kinds-of-products scenario. Quartz maintenance is a no-brainer, evidently. I couldn’t decide if I liked the light “marble-like” looks & would probably have gone with a solid gray in the kitchen had the price been more budget-friendly. I loved the quartzite (Fantasy Brown first drew me in.) but couldn’t decide about the brown part (depended on the slab) & functionality in a kitchen. So, back to granite I went. When I found a Thunder White that didn’t look like someone had splatter painted it with purple paint, I was in love. There are still small raspberry flecks running through it, but it’s not an overall purple splotch look. Lol! My granite place had no samples so I did no testing. It’s only been five months, but I love my kitchen counters! They do water spot, & I keep a drying mat on both sides of my sink as we often keep out glasses with ice water, etc. So far, no stains. I’m the main cook & our kids are grown. I do have grandkids who cook with me but since that’s supervised, it hasn’t been a problem. Hope that helps! Here are a couple of photos. There’s a semi-circle scratch on the bottom left in the marble close-up if you enlarge it. The marble has light & dark streaks running through it so the darker part is natural.