Wow. I will back you, ccsv - yes. Sometimes there are so many things that go wrong you have to triage what to deal with first and things like seams fall through the cracks. I believe you're right, whenever a person selling a product has specialized knowledge of their field (like your seam issue) the burden falls on them to explain it. You cannot know what you don't know since you haven't gone through it before - but they have. Many many times. So, don't feel bad. I do feel your pain and frustration though. That said, the kitchen looks great and I doubt it's worth risking the cabinets or the backsplash, etc.

Hillside House, thank you for the comments and suggestions. We're meeting with the fabrication company tomorrow, and I will discuss options with them. You've given me something to go with. oldryder, we were told that the fabricator's focus would be matching up the veining, and that for that reason we had to have two slabs. There's really quite a bit left, and when we look at the counter that's there it's clear that simply by turning the long piece with the sink 180 degrees the colors and vein directions would have matched better. I think that he simply didn't pay enough attention. 2ManyDiversions, I would love to tell you that the serpentine is fine for cooking, and so far so good, but it's only been a week. I also cook a lot (that's what's a kitchen is for, right?) and I was told that durability was a strength of leathered rainforest. It is true that it's not as hard as granite, but it's not as soft as marble, so it doesn't stain, and it's so diverse in its patterning that incidental scratches don't show. I really do love its look! My husband, who cooks with me, is also in love with it. He actually stands in the kitchen and talks about how much he likes the colors and patterns! We're moving to this from late 70's early 80's Formica, so it's a huge (and welcome) change. I bought a clear plastic cutting board--I would never cut directly on the countertop--and I tend to "clean as I go" so I'm not too worried about staining. I truly wish that I'd seen the whole template layout; you can probably avoid this issue if you choose serpentine by paying completer attention.

Seeing this in 2024 and that seam is TERRIBLE! Either the technology has completely improved or people saying it’s completely fine just have a very low standard. 😳I have never signed off a counter with seems like this, nor will I.

Here are a some pics and my dilemma. Keep in mind this is my old fridge...new one comes today! Here is how we ended up with this: I have never had an enclosed fridge so didn't think about the peninsula dying into panels or how deep panels were going to be. I "semi" designed the new footprint and took it to Lowe's where the KD took over. (yes---I know......) Bought Schuler plywood with maple fronts cabinets. Although the kitchen designer had the model number of the fridge we were buying, which is a full-size, she designed the kitchen with 24" deep panels. She knew I was trying to have the look of an enclosed fridge. Being that I've never had an enclosed fridge, it was something I just didn't think of until the install started. Evidently she put a counter-depth in the design program because the elevation sketches she gave me showed an enclosed fridge. "Luckily" the panels actually came in wrong and were cut at only 23" for some strange reason and the installer caught it right away when looking over everything. Otherwise he probably would have installed them and I would be stuck. So called Lowe's to reorder the panels and somehow in all this it suddenly dawned on me that a full size fridge was going to be deeper and require deeper panels. I thought "no problem! Yay I can order them at 30!" By this time the KD had quit her job due to the pandemic. The other KD didn't know what was going on so we called in the Schuler rep. She was the one who immediately told me that those 30" panels would be sticking out in front of the peninsula. She asked if we could move the peninsula forward since the other side is an overhang for seating, but we couldn't since it would bottleneck the entrance into the kitchen down to under 36" and getting rid of an existing bottleneck was one of the reasons for the re-design to start with. So we had a dilemma. We cannot go down to a counter depth fridge which was the other option. What I decided was to split the difference and order 27" refrigerator panels. The fridge without doors is 29.5" so I will have about 3" of the side of the fridge sticking out which I don't like, but while I want my kitchen to look beautiful, I value the functionality too. The old fridge that you see in the pic sticks out a total of 32" The new fridge will stick out 34 with doors but without handles (4.5" of that is doors that would stick out anyway) Here's the really complicated part....we will be installing decorative panels on the end of the fridge as we have them on all the cabinets. This is how you enter the kitchen and I don't want that big blank space there next to the peninsula. The panels should be installed with just 1/4" reveal. I posted a photo below of how the panels look that are already installed on the side of the pantry that adjoins to a 17" high window seat. Luckily those face the opposite way from the fridge panels so you will never see both at the same time. I also posted photos of us holding up panels on the side of the fridge (they are NOT the right size panels...we have to order those still---we just used these to look at the right edge as to how wide to make the panels.) Also keep in mind we can remove the quartz backsplash piece if that would look better. That was not originally planned...the panels were going to sit directly on top of the countertop. So do we order the panels with just the 1/4" reveal to match the panels in the rest of the kitchen? Or, as the Schuler rep recommended, order the panels so they are the same width with the countertop, leaving about 1 3/4" reveal on the right side, but then your eye follows the countertop all the way up. I asked the countertop templater guy if I should just lengthen the overhang on the kitchen side of the peninsula to 2.5" to bring it out to within 1/4" of the fridge panel but he said no....I'm now thinking I should have insisted on it. Especially since we have full overlay cabinets that already make the overlay look very small since the 1.5" planned overhang is measured from the box, not the front of the drawers. Note how small the overhang looks to the drawers. And then of course, they had templated for a 1.5" overhang and I only got 1.25" UGH! Every quarter inch there would have made the reveal on the side of the fridge less. Suggestions appreciated! I'm hoping that I will eventually make peace in my mind with this issue and won't notice it but it is driving me crazy right now. I think of all the things that screwed up just because of this one error by the KD that I didn't catch and I am beating myself up for it!