No I did not remove the tile except around the sink to remove the old sink. I built forms from wood but the wood on the front was removed after the concrete set for a couple hours and the wood underneath removed the next day. Here is a photo of the concrete in the pass through window after I removed the front mold part. I left the wood underneath to support the overhang until the concrete reached near full strength the next day. You can see some leakage on the right I had to chisel away later. If you do this, I highly recommend caulking all the molds - I only did some areas because I thought I had screwed the soft wood tight enough but I was wrong, the resulting leaks caused all my problem areas. I should have caulked all the seams on the wood molds and I would not have had the problem. The counters still look great after months of use, BTW! here are some pics of the molds: Big mess caused by leak- made painting the cabinets later a lot more work to sand off all that gunk. The leaks also created air gaps in the mold area I couldn't see until the concrete was set, I later had to hand trowel a thick mixture on those areas to repair it. It will never look as smooth as the mold-formed areas. My plan for next spring is to tile the backsplash if budget allows - the beadboard wallpaper is serving its purpose for now but tile will look nicer.

We, however, were not that lucky. We updated our island w/ ?juparana bordeaux granite in 2002. Then in 2007, we did the perimeter w/ another company. But it wasn't the company, it was what slabs were available. There were 2 types of the same granite available: 1 was a shade too light (more sandy) and the other was a shade darker (more red/bordeaux). We mistakenly chose the darker one. Instead we should have chosen something completely different to make it like we purposely went for a 'furniture' or distinct look instead of looking like we goofed. When we went to sell the house, several people commented about the mismatch. The final buyer were just happy to have granite slabs instead of old laminate (like in the other potential houses they were looking at). good luck. Amanda

Everyone is asking for a porcelain slab fabricator close to where they live. What I did was search on Houzz to find local contractors with porcelain slab installations. Then viewing work that they did a few years ago for any cracking particularly around the sink faucets. I did not have good experiences asking the material vendor for contractors for other projects I have done.

I will post pictures tonight after I get home from work. I glanced at the counters this morning, and the caulk was drying clear but the thicker caulk was not clear yet. We used caulk in the bathroom recently that went on white and dried clear. There were parts of the dried caulk where it looked like you could see the rough edges through the caulk. I just have to look at it in more detail tonight. snookums - The granite fabricator is not the same company that is doing the floors. The floors were done by a sub through the GC. The granite fabricators were picked by the KD, and she's worked with them for several years. I am questioning her attention to detail as she said she had never really noticed before that granite could have chips in it like our island did. After I told her about ours she went home and discovered that she had them in the granite in her house and just never noticed. I am hoping that the wavy edge looks tolerable once the caulk is all dried. Some of the fabricators on GW seem to indicate that the wavy edges were normal and shouldn't be something I should complain about.