So it's 250.00 for prefab granite or 490.00 for custom granite or 600.00 for silestone (which offers less maintenance than granite). For the granite, depending on the size that's not too bad. If your looking at a dual sink at 61" your usually looking at 500-700.00 for granite custom top, not including install. I guess it depends on how much you want to spend and how much your house is worth- don't want to over spend for the price of the house. Buying prefab is not as nice as custom however it does give you the option to put more money elsewhere in the remodel if you need to and yet still give you a nice look on a budget. If you sell the house down the road will you get enough of your money back for custom granite vanity vs. prefab? It's interesting that 2cm is the norm because my prefab was 2cm so you can do a DIY install and so it's less expensive. At a custom job and price I'd hope to pay for 3cm instead. My prefab vanity top comes with undermount sink that I attach with clips and epoxy glue. The store I bought it from told me I didn't need too have plywood underneath because it was only 2cm instead of 3cm, but I'm still thinking I might want to for extra added support. I'm only installing a single bowl instead of double so I don't know if that makes a difference. I'm going to contact the manufacture to be sure. I wish I had photos to post but we're not to the vanity stage yet so mine is still in pieces. Good Luck

Thanks. I don't comment on fixtures often, but I do have to say I think the Memoirs is a lovely sink. The sink itself is large, the wide rim I absolutely love, and it has a good-sized bowl. It is indeed a nice sink. We had the same feelings over the backsplash. We went back and forth between painted wood or teak. I thought the teak backsplash would make the Memoirs pop more due to contrast, but my wife didn't want too much wood grain in the room. So we did painted wood which I topped with a teak cap. If my wife ever did want teak, I told her I'd simply glue a teak veneer over the painted wood. It's still painted. That run of cabinetry changed a couple of times during the design process. It was originally going to be a spacious 2-sink vanity. My wife really insisted on one sink! So that freed up space for the floor-to-ceiling storage closet on the left and what we call the "toilet pantry" on the right. The design has worked quite well for us over the years, I built it around 15 years ago. My daughter, who was 7 or 8 years old at the time, designed the profile for the toe kick cutouts. That was quite a bit of fun "working" with her. If you go in another direction, no worries. Choose what works best for you.

@cienza, I don't know if it's moisture, but I'm definitely leaving them off for a few days to see what happens. @lazygardens, That is also another possibility. I cleaned the area over the weekend and have removed the trivets and will see what happens. --- Additional Question --- I also noticed that some of the epoxy (spelling) in the two seams I have a cracking and chipping off. Has this happened to anyone else? What causes this to happen?

Hi Sugarski, I also had an old dark cherry kitchen with white formica countertops. Even though the 19 year old cabinets had some wear and tear, water stains, scratches etc... I really liked them and wanted to keep them for my remodel this year. I have never done furniture refinishing in my life so really didn't know what to do, but I knew the first step was to clean them up. I used a mild wood cleaner with a soft cloth and for stubborn greasy buildup I used a 0000 fine steel wool. After cleaning them up, I had lots of scratches and areas of water damage where the finish had been removed. I bought some Minwax Wood Finish Stain Marker pens at Lowes. They look just like a regular marker but you can get them in a variety of wood stain colors. The Red Mahogany 225 was the best color match for my cabinet stain. I spent 2-3 days just touching up all the scratches, nicks and raw wood spots on my cabinets. I let the stain soak in good but would wipe up any excess that got on the rest of the cabinet. The stain pen really makes an amazing cosmetic improvement. I'm sure a regular cabinet refinisher would have sanded down the fronts, reapplied stain and some type of finish sealer, but I wanted to see if I could get acceptable results with my quick method. After the atain had set over night I used a wood polisher liquid on a microfiber cloth to softly buff and shine the cabinets. They really did look good after that. I will be keeping a close eye on any new damage or stains and try to address them right away from now on. But so far I have had several people tell me they like my "new" cabinets not realizing they are the 19 year old originals :) Oh and btw... I was worried about granite being too dark also, but I LOVE my granite! It has just enough color variation with light creams and browns that I don't think it darkens the room at all. I like it so much better than the old white formica :) Original 1989 Kitchen: New Kitchen Remodel 2008: (still in progress) Kitchen Cabinet before Cleanup: Kitchen Cabinet After Cleanup and new Hardware: