Your beautiful chairs are in danger of getting banged up. You could try to "cushion" the edge of the countertop. I'm looking for something to prevent my wood desk chair from getting banged up on the top edge of my desk. There are "edge protector" products for tables, but the ones I've seen look like crap. Something made for cars (side molding) may work. I'm looking for clear molding, and haven't found anything in clear, yet. Here is a link that might be useful: Body Side Molding This post was edited by GypsyWaterfowl on Fri, Aug 30, 13 at 4:13

ugh.... we are just at this point now and realized that our new counter/breakfast bar is 12' with the sink cutout dead center. My wife is stuck on an undermount and we really wanted granite... we will, of course, be getting a few fabricators to bid it. But is it feasible to do the seam with a cutout at the seam? The front edge of the sink seems a bit vulnerable to me. Also the current layout has the dishwasher adjacent to the sink and I guess we'd need to get the cabinet built with a support at the seam. If we can seam at the sink it would be small, just the length of the front setback (breakfast bar transitions to countertop there)... how well does the bullnose normally line up on a seam? Do they polish it on-site? Are we better off getting used to NOT granite? The 12' counter is not negotiable in our design.

Thanks for the feedback everyone. We moved this past year and yes, it’s a terrible kitchen layout. Unfortunately I know that my husband will not ever do a total kitchen remodel. We just don’t know how long we will live here to make it worth it. We made the mistake of doing WAY to much to our last house and ended up moving after only 1.5 years. We will be rotating the cooktop so that it is still in the island but instead face the fridge. There’s no way to put it elsewhere without getting all new cabinets, I tried. I see what you are saying with the grey, and maybe I should have said lighter counter as I’m not tied to grey, just something a little brighter. Is there any lighter granite that works well with Ooba Tooba? My main question is still do I only do the island counter or do I do the entire kitchen’s counters to be uniform?

How much space between where stools would be when in use? Cannot tell if large seats would fit? Who and when would be using these and counter. Stools with backs are more comfortable for lounging longer. Kids need backs for pulling themselves up. Color YES!