Sorry no one has offered help. The closest I've come to your problem was spilling liquid soap on flagstone. Because it was outside, I had to flood it with water and it eventually disappeared. It took a lot of water. Jane

If you have trouble visualizing what you'd like but "know it when you see it", then at this stage you should probably just look at as many stainless / dark cherry kitchens as you can and see which countertops and flooring "grab" you. In my case I knew I wanted simple, natural cherry cabinets and stainless appliances and probably a wood floor, but that was it. Looking at lots of pictures helped me narrow things down, so now I can at least have intelligent conversations with kitchen designers. I'd suggest going over to houzz.com and entering "stainless steel dark cherry kitchen" into their search box and looking through some of the hundreds of results you get. It's a great source of ideas. After you see some you like, you can probably come up with more words to add to the search box to narrow things down. You can also go to google and enter "site:gardenweb.com dark cherry stainless" and you'll find lots of threads on this site too. I don't know of a way to limit it to threads with photos, unfortunately. Laura

People are likely to tell you to do a search--which is a good idea. There have been several threads on this in here and I definitely found them helpful. In the meantime, I can tell you that I have carrara on my perimeter countertops. My GC and KD both said "NO WAY" in the beginning, but I forged ahead! Mine have been in for about six weeks and I love them. The biggest cons you'll hear are staining and etching. I haven't had any staining issues at all. My husband left a lid from a margarita mix container on one counter and it did etch (acidic). But I'm pretty sure I'm the only person who can find it. What you'll generally hear on here is that if you're willing to live with some "patina" meaning some etching and possibly staining (though there are poultice recipes that people seem to have great success with), then marble is a great choice. If you want a completely blemish-free surface, it may not be for you. Definitely do a search on here, though--and good luck!

Hi Ken! I digress. I have Cambria Bellingham and I love it. Quartz is an awesome counter top. Is your heart set on granite? When you looked at pictures and found a granite that took your breath away, what was the granite that was used?