Put in 7 months ago and really love it. Kept walking by it in the granite yard and would stop in my tracks. Sales person kept saying "you don't want that", while my kids ran circles around me. Soft, natural, dark (but not too dark), with some veining and variation. We have a few chips, but zero staing (it was sealed on site.) The chips have "softened" over time. Surprisingly, it does not bother me (yes, a bit when I found the first one :) I was told it is more durable than some soapstone, but not as durable as many granites. We only have it on our perimeter counters. Did a white and gray granite on the island that we knew would be very durabled, but in retrospect would have been fine with the PdC on the island as well. We did have some trouble with our seam. Had to remove one side and have it taken back to have it refinished because of chips. They said it was more brittle. Here is a not so great photo. We originally planned on enhancing it to be darker, but held off and are happy. When you wipe it or get oil on it, it darkens temporarily but goes away quickly.

Lot of confusing bits here. Here are some comments / responses from someone with PdC installed in a working kitchen for 4 years. 1) Pietra Oatmeal or Pietra Black Pearl are not Pietra Cardosa Pietra Cardosa is a medium gray schist from Cardosa Italy. It typically has cloudy white/light gray strips, swirls of contrast, which shapes can vary based on how it's quarried. Issues with those other stones shouldn't be conflated with real PdC. 2) Pietra behaves pretty similarly to Granite, but because it's more monochromatic, it can show markings more. The speckled deposits in most granites can hide quite a bit of stains, etching etc. 3) PC is porous, and like marble can suffer from etching with poor care. That said we use a lot of lemon and tomato in our cooking, and have not yet had an issue. We're not crazy about cleanups and don't follow people around with cleaning rags, but we're also not leaving spills for extended times like overnight. I would say anyone that keeps a dirty kitchen may have issues, but generally, I wouldn't worry about staining or etching any more than lots of other stones. Our stone does not stain with oil or rubber footings as noted above. 4) I've had Pietra (Island and perimeter counters) for 4 years with no major issues. I used Ager to seal it annually, which slightly darkens the lighter from a cooler gray into a slightly more medium gray. It's a subtle difference. It is NOT black. The real benefit, particularly around the sink, is how it behaves with water on it. Whether you use a color enhancing sealer or not, you'll want to seal at least once a year, or whenever water stops beading neatly on the surface. Some people report years between seals without issue, and some do it every 6 mos. YMMV, depending on your use, habits, etc. With a more porous stone, this is pretty standard maintenance as with marble or granite anyways. As with any treatment, you should start in a small remote area and see if you like it, before hitting your entire kitchen. It's hard to fathom how someone could end up hitting the whole kitchen before knowing it they liked it, and then hating it. That's not a problem with stone, but with user-error. 5) I appreciate the comparisons to Soapstone. Soapstone is a great product with it's own nuances, but we were unable to find a real genuine medium gray sample. Most have a slight green tint to them, which didn't work for our design and style goals. 6) Only complaint, is that we did chip our counters by accidentally dropping heavy water glass on the counter. It was quite a hit, and we had a couple small chips where it landed. After the most recent seal, the spots are no longer really visible, and can only really be found by touch. We took a bit of a leap going with the PdC, given all the misinformation and confusing posts like this thread features, but it was really the only stone that met our design goals. Bottom line, we get a ton of compliments on our counters, and they're holding up and performing great. They still look just like what we wanted - a medium gray, interesting but subtle stone with a honed finish (this stone is too porous to polish, so if you're looking for a high shine, look elsewhere.) Our kitchen was recently featured in a major design magazine. No regrets so far. Make sure you're using a trusted dealer with authentic PdC, and if this is the look you're chasing, with the real stuff and pretty standard maintenance, you'll be fine.

Thanks for all the replies to my post! Sorry that I was rude and didn't post any follow-up as the thread continued to grow! We went to Teixeira in San Francisco and chose some gorgeous slabs of Barocca soapstone. This is a softer soapstone than I have in my current house, but even when wet or oiled, it will go to a medium grey, not a black. On top of that, the representative said they sell a dry wax product that can maintain it in any state of grey between the raw unoiled look toward the oiled look. He didn't show me the product, and I don't know how it's applied, but he showed us some stone in a countertop display that supposedly had been treated with it (still grey color after years). We will be finished with the new home remodel soon, and I can't wait. I'm sure the barocca will be softer and more easily dinged, but my dark soapstone really has nearly no marks on it after 6 years of use. I'm not afraid of a patina in the new kitchen- it will work fine. Regarding Pietra- great to hear that it is not necessarily as tricky as I have heard. I think it is gorgeous stone- and yes, it's "cleaner" looking- than soapstone. It's sort of a step toward granite that way. I prefer the veins I've seen in soapstones. I like the patterning I've seen in pietra, but it seems to me that it mostly is swirls of inclusions, almost as if it represents settling patterns in rock formation. It gives a more uniform and homogeneous look than the veins I've seen in soapstone. Not sure if all Pietra has this type of patterning and lack of veins. A final note on marks in soapstone: I have almost no marks in mine as I said above. The new house has mirror-finish Caesar stone counters in dark brown (that will be replaced). When unpacking groceries, my husband dropped a bottle of beer on the counter. Caught it just as it fell right side up. The bottle did not break, but there is a mark on the counter that matches the little stripes from the bottom edge of the bottle. It is really noticeable and will always be there (until we rip it out!!). On soapstone, it would fade in right away and would not be noticed at all. Just saying.

One apparent reason quartzites are etching is if the supplier at the quarry put resin on the slab before shipping it, which makes it more susceptible to etching. I think cloud asked how that could change the chemical composition but as I thought about it, it made sense since stone can be changed by putting acid on it, or even by putting a sealer on it to protect it from stains. The other information that others have offered as to why quartzite etches (geology websites say quartzite is highly resistant to acids) is what is being sold is not a true quartzite. I sure don't know, and unfortunately most distributors don't have the stone analyzed to tell. I suppose it's possible, but I've been told that all Quartzite Bianca (aka Luce de luna, Aspen White) comes from the same quarry. Maybe it's possible some stone in the same quarry is true quartzite while other stone is not... If anyone in Oregon, WA, Idaho has found Quartzite Bianca that has not been resined, I'd love to hear from you. I do think there is something to the idea that putting resin on quartzite makes it etch because we have examples of that from homeowners in this area that got quartzite that had resin put on it prior to shipping, and they etched. But, it would be great to hear from someone who knows their quartzite had resin put on it and they've had no etching--that way we can eliminate the resin idea as a cause for etching. My heart goes out to anyone that this happened to. We pay a lot of money for these beautiful stones and many of us were told it would not etch.