i would get rid of the overhead cabinets to let some light in from the patio doors in the adjacent room. are you going to paint your cabinets or leave them as is? i think that you should paint the cabinets to brighten the space the gazon granite would coordinate nicely but it's so heavy with the dark cabinets for a room with no natural light. you could paint the cabs cream to go with the gazon granite. Ivory fantasy granite would look nice with your stain color but isn't so heavy if you really want to leave the stain

Oldbat2be - thanks for the info. I'll be anxious to see your countertop in! Beausrose - thank you for comments. That tile gets positive comments wherever I take it (and yes, I take it with me shopping). I once had people working in my house (not related to the kitchen work), and one of them said "I hope you picked that blue tile." :) I'd be happy to share the information about it. It's Grazia Essenze in the color Genziana. I added the link below. The tile in the picture is the 13x13cm Neoclassico. It's made in Italy, so beware that it's an unusual size - 13 x 13 cm, which is something close to 5x5". I'm putting 3 of those tiles over the rangetop, on the diagonal, surrounded by straight white tiles, bordered by the 6cm high voluta. Around the kitchen, I will have white tile on the diagonal, with the 3x3 cm blue voluta as an accent. So I'm mixing the voluta and the Neoclassico lines of the Essenze. My problem is that the matching tile in white is in "magnolia" and it's not a bright white. It's more creamy. I really wanted a white tile with the white cabinets and Torquay countertop, but couldn't find one that exact size. So I'm using 6x6 inch Market-Collection Asbury field tile as the background. The sizes aren't exact, but by mixing them straight with the diagonal Grazia accents (and the other way around), I hope it will be okay. I thought it better to have the right color, wrong size, than the wrong color, right size. It looks fine on paper... we'll see. If I have time tomorrow, I'll post the pictures of the sample board of this tile. And get this! When I was pouring over magazines, I found a diagonal accent I liked. I found out who made it, went to a boutique tile store, they located it, and it was ... $195 a tile. I realize some of you reading this might spend that on a tile, but it was over my budget by far. I then found the Grazia - I think the big diagonal tiles are $18 each or something like that. And I love it! Tile is VERY hard for me to pick out (when I did a bathroom, it took me 11 trips to the tile store just to pick a cream tile). But when I found the Grazia, I was done. It's perfect for what I was looking for! So, onto the sink. We went yesterday to see sea salt in person. It is lovely, but was too creamy compared to the Torquay. They had a cashmere there that was lovely with Torquay, but the color didn't match our chip exactly, and our chip didn't match their chip exactly (one was browner, one greyer - they are going to bring this to Kohler's attention), so we were worried about ordering another sink and not being sure of the exact color. Plus it would take 10-12 days to get in. Plus, there is really nothing in my kitchen design that goes with cashmere, even thought it's VERY pretty. It just doesn't add anything to my color scheme. That last is what sold me against cashmere (it IS really pretty though!). So we are going with ... a white Kohler sink (Langlade smart divide). All this, for a white sink. But I think it will be beautiful with the white cabs, white and blue tiles, and Torquay. In addition, it's cheaper, I can get it in 2 days, it's classic and traditional, and it CANNOT be a wrong choice! So white it is! I am hoping it will POP with the other design elements I have. Thanks everyone for your help! I'll post pictures when I find the time! Piglet Here is a link that might be useful: Link to Grazia Essenze Tile

We found that the Shitake really changed tone depending upon what it was surrounded by. I would suggest painting a large sample board and moving from place to place in your light and against your other materials. I found choosing paint colors the hardest part of building our home. You have to have a large sample and take to the actual place you want to paint it to see the light because it changes depending on where you are.

Well, I just wrote a lengthy post with pics to follow up and thank everyone for their feedback, ideas, and pics, and it didn't post! I am guessing it had to do with the photos, so I will try this again with just a photo here and if it works I will post more separately. We ended up going with LG Everest for the counters (island and perimeter) and Sonoma tile in Aquarius for the backsplash.