No; I'm not committed to any particular table. we have a hand-me-down circle table that has a leaf making it into an oval. I just drew up what we will live with until our budget recovers from the build! :-)The dining room is just beyond the refrigerator, so we will eat there and at the breakfast bar. The kitchen table is for homework, family games, and puzzles that no one ever makes me put away so I can set the table!

It's the glued crossply over large areas, hardwood or soft, that's the problem, and the best glue in the world won't compensate for it. It might be possible in flooring (where my expertise falls away) but then flooring is attatched to big, honking joists to keep everything flat. With furniture the members are more delicate, so it's more important that the structure be balanced, without a lot of internal stresses. For supporting the counter and whatever's put on it, I do think the '3/4" X ?' supports would be adequate, even at spacing wider than 8" OC. With that underlying frame constructued, I'd be inclined to just nail on the flooring as you would ordinarily, except I'd predrill the nail holes to avoid splitting. Gluing those 3/4" members into dados will make the joint stronger, but also builds in the same sorts of stresses; still a bad idea. The principles of good structural design with wood all revolve around the fact that wood shrinks and expands considerably across its width, but hardly at all along it's length. Therefore you can build a rectangular frame and expect it to stay pretty much the same size, but a single wide board or several boards edge-glued into a unit will change size considerably as the humidity fluxuates. It's futile to try to prevent this movement; the idea is to design a structure that allows the parts to move without causing damage. For a breakfast bar I would want to avoid having cracks open between the flooring boards during dry seasons, so I'd be inclined to glue the flooring boards together. However, since the frame (or plywood, though I like the frame idea better) beneath will be dimensionally stable, I would look for a way to allow some give and take between the surface piece and the supporting piece. In other words, no glue between those two parts. The nails are probably a soft enough connection that they'd allow sufficient movement. There are also special-purpose metal table top fasteners with slots through which the attatching screws are driven. The slots allow the moving surface to be attatched, yet shrink without pulling itself apart and expand without pushing the frame apart. There are other ways to tackle it, but the point is that you want to have the stable supporting frame hold firmly, but not rigidly, onto that moving surface -- no death grips.

I just spent an hour removing a shelf that had been secured to a tile wall with silicone today. Wipe the quartz and wood with acetone, dab a nickel sized bead of silicone on the quartz in a random pattern every 16" or so across the 12", set the wood and forget about it. You can stand on the cantilever the next day and you'll only get it off by driving shims between them, just like I had to do. Mechanical fasteners are unnecessary. Silicone is reversible. A chipboard core with veneer is much more dimensionally stable than the real thing. If you're not chopping on it, it's the best choice.

Hey Beth, do you think something like this would work in the space for pendants or do you think it's too big for the space I had mentioned earlier? https://www.wayfair.com/lighting/pdx/brayden-studio-burner-3-light-kitchen-island-pendant-brys7567.html Edison style lights are pretty yellow, with everything else being around 3000k, do you think a regular white halogen bulb would work instead? Another thought was something like this in that space to bring out some of the black in the granite picture earlier. https://www.wayfair.com/lighting/pdx/brayden-studio-daniell-3-light-kitchen-island-pendant-byst8275.html Do you have any thoughts on one over the other? Also, for the dining room table we were talking last night about maybe a hanging drum like this? https://www.wayfair.com/lighting/pdx/willa-arlo-interiors-gaetan-3-light-led-drum-chandelier-wrlo1657.html