Your counters look great! I was wondering if you would mind telling me about your seams. I just had Caesarstone counters installed, and noticed that I can feel the seams, which surprised me since I thought manufactured stone would be easier to make flush so the seam would barely be noticeable. If you rub your hand over your seam with eyes closed, can you tell it is there? Do you feel that water and dirt can accumulate in that seam and will have to be cleaned out by running a cloth down the length of the seam? Just want to see if I'm being too picky! Thanks!

Here are a some pics and my dilemma. Keep in mind this is my old fridge...new one comes today! Here is how we ended up with this: I have never had an enclosed fridge so didn't think about the peninsula dying into panels or how deep panels were going to be. I "semi" designed the new footprint and took it to Lowe's where the KD took over. (yes---I know......) Bought Schuler plywood with maple fronts cabinets. Although the kitchen designer had the model number of the fridge we were buying, which is a full-size, she designed the kitchen with 24" deep panels. She knew I was trying to have the look of an enclosed fridge. Being that I've never had an enclosed fridge, it was something I just didn't think of until the install started. Evidently she put a counter-depth in the design program because the elevation sketches she gave me showed an enclosed fridge. "Luckily" the panels actually came in wrong and were cut at only 23" for some strange reason and the installer caught it right away when looking over everything. Otherwise he probably would have installed them and I would be stuck. So called Lowe's to reorder the panels and somehow in all this it suddenly dawned on me that a full size fridge was going to be deeper and require deeper panels. I thought "no problem! Yay I can order them at 30!" By this time the KD had quit her job due to the pandemic. The other KD didn't know what was going on so we called in the Schuler rep. She was the one who immediately told me that those 30" panels would be sticking out in front of the peninsula. She asked if we could move the peninsula forward since the other side is an overhang for seating, but we couldn't since it would bottleneck the entrance into the kitchen down to under 36" and getting rid of an existing bottleneck was one of the reasons for the re-design to start with. So we had a dilemma. We cannot go down to a counter depth fridge which was the other option. What I decided was to split the difference and order 27" refrigerator panels. The fridge without doors is 29.5" so I will have about 3" of the side of the fridge sticking out which I don't like, but while I want my kitchen to look beautiful, I value the functionality too. The old fridge that you see in the pic sticks out a total of 32" The new fridge will stick out 34 with doors but without handles (4.5" of that is doors that would stick out anyway) Here's the really complicated part....we will be installing decorative panels on the end of the fridge as we have them on all the cabinets. This is how you enter the kitchen and I don't want that big blank space there next to the peninsula. The panels should be installed with just 1/4" reveal. I posted a photo below of how the panels look that are already installed on the side of the pantry that adjoins to a 17" high window seat. Luckily those face the opposite way from the fridge panels so you will never see both at the same time. I also posted photos of us holding up panels on the side of the fridge (they are NOT the right size panels...we have to order those still---we just used these to look at the right edge as to how wide to make the panels.) Also keep in mind we can remove the quartz backsplash piece if that would look better. That was not originally planned...the panels were going to sit directly on top of the countertop. So do we order the panels with just the 1/4" reveal to match the panels in the rest of the kitchen? Or, as the Schuler rep recommended, order the panels so they are the same width with the countertop, leaving about 1 3/4" reveal on the right side, but then your eye follows the countertop all the way up. I asked the countertop templater guy if I should just lengthen the overhang on the kitchen side of the peninsula to 2.5" to bring it out to within 1/4" of the fridge panel but he said no....I'm now thinking I should have insisted on it. Especially since we have full overlay cabinets that already make the overlay look very small since the 1.5" planned overhang is measured from the box, not the front of the drawers. Note how small the overhang looks to the drawers. And then of course, they had templated for a 1.5" overhang and I only got 1.25" UGH! Every quarter inch there would have made the reveal on the side of the fridge less. Suggestions appreciated! I'm hoping that I will eventually make peace in my mind with this issue and won't notice it but it is driving me crazy right now. I think of all the things that screwed up just because of this one error by the KD that I didn't catch and I am beating myself up for it!

I'm going to start from your last question. You'll definitely want to use silicone, color-matched if possible, to do the seam between your finished quartz and the first tile of your backsplash. That will help with water resistance and also give you some flex. You'll probably be fine with silicone underneath to secure the quartz to the brackets, but I wouldn't count on silicone raising the quartz to the appropriate level. You either need to re-position your brackets slightly or shim it to get it to the best height where it will stay. Silicone could flex and strain the seams if your quartz piece isn't securely set at the right height. As for finishing the two seams, a pro would use something that would be near permanent and very difficult to remove in the event of future problems, also something color matched that would be inconspicuous. They'd also have equipment to pull the sides of the seams together tightly, but since you're working with two pieces on the sides that are previously affixed, you won't be able to do that. There is some type of solution I've seen discussed in these forums that can be ordered color matched for this job, but it would take a while to go back through my saved information and find it. Maybe Joseph Corlett or someone else will see your post and comment. If not, let me know, and I'll try to find it for you. You might want to just do the seams with silicone for now so that if anything else goes wrong, you can re-do the job without damaging all the pieces of quartz trying to take it apart again.

Yes you're right! So I had the old Carrara marmi and they were getting a new lot in June that would be whiter so I think that ended up being the difference. They said the company switched manufacturers and the whole lot they had received was the off white tone of marmi. It's identical to the first picture! I had no idea there was a new vs old. Luckily they were very helpful and are allowing me to pick out any quartz from the show room and replace it for $300 whichever I choose. I could have gotten the new marmi but I would have to wait until June when it comes in. This felt like a great option to me though as the higher up quartz was not really in my price range at all. So I am happy with that and I got to look through many different styles of white quartz slabs in the warehouse and bring a few home to decide. They are going to replace the whole thing. Now I just have to choose between Cararra Morro and Calacutta Clara!