Thanks for all the feedback! I definitely will go to see the seam. I'm just so curious about what the technique is and if the seam is really virtually invisible - I've never heard of this before. It does sound challenging to create the piece with seam at the shop and transport and install it without breaking. I wonder if it's not so much a "new" technique as something they just don't like to do routinely. The photos and the link were interesting to see, thanks all! I can barely see where the seams are in the posted photos, but hard to judge from a distance. My island is pretty much identical to the one in stonegirl's photos (is that giallo veneziano?), except that ours bows out where the eating counter is. I don't think there's really any way to lower a part of the island at this point (the end pieces are already built) without a major remake, but I have thought of the possibility. Will start thinking in those terms if I don't want a seam, regardless. I hate these kind of decisions too, michellemarie! lilyfreak - I have found a big difference between what various fabricators told me with respect to my situation - don't know if the same would be true for you (maybe the experts on this board will weigh in) but it's worth exploring. For example, I was told by many fabricators that it was "impossible" to transport and install an 11 foot island when I had already been to a place that told me it would be no problem with adequate entry to the house and enough workers to transport. Ran into the same thing when asking about seams. One fabricator told me that it is impossible to get a seam under 1/8 inch. Another told me that he had never seen or heard of a slab over 130 inches. When I mentioned finding these elsewhere, the next day he came up with six from his supplier! I am sure he knew - he just wanted to sell from his own inventory first or didn't want to deal with the more difficult job. I can understand that - I just wish they didn't imply these things were impossible for anyone. On the other hand, I've run across some absolutely terrific and helpful fabricators - they helped me search for slabs, referred me to their suppliers and were always completely honest about what they could and could not do. It's interesting though - I never would have gone past the first place recommended to me if I hadn't started looking into large slabs. I imagine most people don't!

I really like having our island one level and making it two level to avoid a seam wouldn't have been an acceptable compromise to me. Perhaps because I'm short, I find it more comfortable to sit at a counter height island and I would feel too cut-off from seeing the rest of the room by a raised bar while cooking. Also, I'm not sure I understand your layout, but I think you said that the seating area was the 72" side (the one that doesn't connect to the right angle corner. If you made it raised, it seems like you could just be making the problem of reaching the center harder. It would take a long reach to reach the lower counter from the side with the raised counter so whatever was lower would have to be cleaned from the lower edges. I'm also not clear on where the cabinets are under the island. Depending on what cabinets you ordered, perhaps they could be arranged in a different configuration if you wanted. I'm not saying that's what you should do but if it is what you wanted to do, changing your mind now doesn't necessarily mean that the cabinets would have to be wasted. When we thought we couldn't get large enough slabs of the granite we wanted to do our island with one, we did decide it would be fine with a seam. A good fabricator can do excellent seams. Usually the granite slabs are book matched. Granite slabs are successive slices of a block of granite. "Book matched" means they alternate which side of the granite they polish so that for two successive slabs, the sides that touched each other in the block were polished. Therefore the grain on one will be an almost perfect mirror image of the grain on the other. They can layout the pieces for each side of the seam on the two slabs so that there is a grain match at the seam. If they can do a tight seam, it can almost disappear and the result can look very good. I'm glad that we were able to find big enough slabs to not need a seam. But the seam with book matched slabs would have been my second choice.

I'll add that at the time of install, the fabricator got a little nervous about the length (10ft) of the long leg of my L with the sink in the middle of it and contemplated putting a seam and asked me about it. I said I was happy we didn't have one, but if being seamless would jeopardize this piece and we'd have to start over, I'd take a seam. Granted our piece had particular movement and I'd been to the yard and there was no more of it. In the end, they went for it and it worked out fine. But by that point I trusted him enough to say he needed to do what he thought best as the professional. (Granted that's burned me in other areas of my reno with other professionals>.)

I had an installation of a G shaped small kitchen done by a very tallented fabricator who actually did part of it in an L shape to avoid seams. Ask about the maximum size piece they are able to transport in their truck. You may get lucky and be able to get two L shapes centered at the sink giving the appearance of no seams if your granite comes in slabs greater than 10', but more usual would be three pieces. In any case, a conversation with the fabricator is the place to start, and make sure to document the results of the conversation in the contract. I paid much more per square foot when I had larger pieces made, perhaps because of the complexity of cutting and handling such pieces.