I am having a lot of anxiety over this area and am really hoping for some guidance from all the experienced and gifted posters out there - please! We decided on absolute black honed for the counter - now need to decide the thickness. This dining room butler's pantry in the expanded dining room was suppose to appear like 2 independent furniture pieces. KD's goal was nothing like a kitchenette (or the adjacent kitchen) so he did not want 10 feet of a counter - hence the brown "china cabinet" piece steps back from the black "buffet counter" BUT he also planned for the counter heights to be different. The china cabinet has a thick (almost 4") of a wood slab between base and uppers. And he planned for 2 cm for the buffet. I know it is hard from these pictures (I'll try to get by there to get better ones today) but if we use 2 cm granite as recommended by the KD there will be only like 3/4 of an inch difference. If we use 3cm it could be shimmed up slightly to line up with the base of the routed edge on the dining room piece and seem in line. I don't want the 2cm to look like a mistake - a just miss BUT if the design with the step back already commits us to "mismatch" pieces I don't want to do it half way. HELP. I am at the end of a long line of too many decisions and just want this done and moving forward. Any help, suggestions, questions etc. would be GREATLY appreciated.

We have a traditional kitchen but similar colors to yours---white Shaker perimeter and dark cherry island. Our perimeter counters are a dark green granite with a lot of "movement" and the island is a white guartzite called luce di luna. The quartzite is a real stone, slightly harder than granite I'm told but I'm not sure, and at least in our area a bit more expensive. It is, however, very calm and I could see it in a modern kitchen such as you describe. When we priced out granite, quartzite, and zodiaq we found the price difference for our kitchen was really rather negligible so we went with the granite and the quartzite but if the zodiaq---I think it was misty carrera that we were considering---had been much less we would have used that instead of the quartzite. HTH.

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?

I have a question for you guys. Is it too outdated to have a cointibayoon do the quartz for the badksplash(only the 4inches) without having to add any other back splash? I worry about making my kitchen Look too busy and having a hard time matching colors , so i was hoping to just install a quartz counter top with that extra 4 inch lip without doing any other backsplash . That is assuming my counter top isn’t too bland . Also, can I get away with a gray? What about the Silestone calacatta gold ? Are the speckled quartz outdated ? Thanks! My floor has to be changed because it’s got a lot of holes and pkaces that are showing the underneath black rubber. it also has stains . My dream is to have white cabinets , a Taupe counter top(warmer gray like), and wood floors . If calacatta gold form Silestone , Bianco drift from Caesarstone , cambria Torquay , or viatera “sol” would work with white or warm cabinets , I’d pick one of those maybe. It’s a small kitchen, and I don’t have a huge budget .. but I do want to make a big enough change beginning with the counter tops that were never sealed properly, flooring, (and our back wall behind the sink that needs to be replaced ) . Thanks, again. I like honesty .