Aloha! The kitchen is mostly done and at the end of the day we ended up with Glacier White Granite! When I went to reserved my stone, all of the pieces of the honed arabescato that I liked where gone. I wasn't inclined to spend all that extra money and settle for one that had large dark spots all over it. I also wasn't thrilled with the selection of polished, for the same price. Then I found a slab of polished Super White at another stone yard that I loved and was so proud of myself for picking a stone that was a $1500 savings over the arabescato. Then the fabricator called me to let me know that the slab wasn't big enough for the whole kitchen, so I would have to pay another $1000 to finish the last 15" piece of counter. That was my final sign. I gave up on the marble and started all over. I found a slab of Glacier White that I loved, and it turns out that it was snatched up 3 days earlier. Feeling burned out, I finally found a slab of Glacier White that I didn't hate and that became our counters. At the end of the day I went from wanting my first love to settling for something I didn't hate. Sigh. The final sting was that the fabricator didn't tell me when he was templeting (I thought he was going to let me know, because he said that I could come down and help decide), so the parts that I didn't like ended up being the most prominent. Unfortunately, that has been how our entire remodel has been. Even our contractor has been shocked at how many issues we've had. I have definitely been schooled by my kitchen. :-) (The worst was having to rent a concrete grinder and personally grind down a hump in my floor that the self leveler didn't fix. Worst mess to clean up EVER!!! I actually cried that night.) Now, having said all of that, and having reached a temporary stopping point (still need to tile and deal with some minor issues), I've finally had some time to stop being mad at my kitchen and really enjoy it. And guess what - I really like my counters! I love that I don't have to worry about my husband leaving wet raspberries and other gooey things on my counters (because, yes, he still does). And, yes, they do end up having things stacked all over them all the time, so they are not a glowing and pristine focal point. They are my work horse counters. I love my deep undermount sink that these counters allow me to have. We stayed pretty close to budget. I would say that, after tiling, we'll have spent about $16K, but with that low budget came A LOT of extra work and frustration. All of our cabinets came from Ikea. We used 18" fan cabinets and stacked them to achieve our 36" uppers and then ordered Scherr's custom doors to go over them (Scherr's was fantastic to deal with). I do not, however, recommend the stacking method. It made it so hard to plumb and level with our fantastically out of square ( and sloping walls) u shaped kitchen. One thing I can't recommend enough is edgebanding our Ikea cabinets with Fast Edge wood. We painted the edges of the Gnosjo cabinets dark, so you don't see the white through the doors. Even where the white doors go. Once we trimmed out the cabinets, I used wood putty, then primed and painted the trim and cabinet edges and everything looks so cohesive. Also love our new LED pot lights! I have so much extra light in the kitchen and I love it. We did lose some natural light taking out an east facing window (that faced the neighbors window about 8 feet away,so we never pulled up the blinds), but we also gained a lot more cabinet space. Living in the gray NW, I don't get much natural light most of the year anyway, so I find that having the extra electrical light is a lot more helpful. Some things that I'm mixed on... The Ikea Gnosjo cabinets are crazy finger printy!! Someday I will find the time to clean them properly again, but they are very streaky in the meantime. My dark gray Marmoleum floors feel fantastic on my feet, but they show ever single crumb known to man. They were also very tricky for us to install. I won't go into details, but let's just say that every demonstration on the web showed them being installed in an empty square room. It was also really hard to get info online about the click together tiles (what kind of underlayment?) and the instructions were obviously translated from another language and didn't always make sense. The prior kitchen looked decent from a distance, but it was falling apart and quite dysfunctional. I love the functionality of my new kitchen and the ikea cabinets (with lots of drawers!) are fantastic. I love my sink and I love that my floors don't have missing chunks and holes all over. I do miss the over the stove microwave (now we have one in the pantry), but our gas stove was just too hot for one and our third microwave was failing. Now we have a hood that is actually vented outside. All in all the kitchen is a huge improvement. It could use a little color, so I've been tracking down some aqua accessories. We are planning to do white subway tile with light gray grout for all wall surfaces within the next few months. Sorry for writing a book to your small question! :-) DJ

Now that I see pic, I realize I was picturing your wood edge differently. Don't let dh read this, but I actually think they are nice. I just think the pure plain white counter is a little jarring against that. If you did the one you described that had some "movement" in it, I'd bet it would look so much nicer. Anything that is not so stark white will help. I also imagine that they show everything as I have old pale peach ones now and they drive me nuts. Of course I want clean counters, but mid-cooking, it bothers me how I have to keep stopping to wipe, lol. Having a multi tone, even a very light one, will not make every crumb stand out from a mile away. I think I'd go with new formica on the tops if I did not like stone. Since you already have wood cabs and a wood floor, I don't think I'd go with a wood counter. If it is not too presumptuous, I think a new backsplash to go with the new counters would refresh the whole look. It need not be pricey either, just a little less plain. If you have access to a Habitat for Humanity Restore or similar, or try ebay, you can pick up tile very reasonably and then use your creativity to add some zing. HD & Lowes have some nice choices these days too. Btw- I love a nice all-white backsplash, just not the 4 x 4s laid upright with no accent pieces or liners. I adore tile and the options to make it special and unique. It really sets the tone for the kitchen due to nature of how one sees it right away from a distance. You can't be as creative with other elements to the same extent.

Yes, mine did that too, it was very smelly, I turned on the attic fan and sucked it all out. Then the oven blew a fuse about 2/3 of the way thru the cycle and the oven and clock and timers wouldn't work until it was repaired. We had company that weekend, I was not happy.At least the burners would still work, but I was ticked. After googling it, found out that that wasn't all that rare, but it still made me mad that I had to have a repairman come fix it. Now I know the part number and we can do it ourselves if it happens again. Repairman suggested doing a shorter cycle and pulling it out from the countertops so it won't get TOO TOO hot and overheat and blow another fuse. Don't buy Samsung appliances, that's my new motto. :)

I am not sure that that is quite the point, though. I think most people think it's perfectly reasonable that kids pour their own drinks and prepare their own snacks, and honestly they don't "see" things the same way adults do, nor are they coordinated enough to perform some of these tasks with precision. I can remember using the hand mixer or blender and spraying things all over the place on more than one occasion and not quite understanding how it happened. But if you take a relatively simple material like laminate, the kinds of things that kids do, spill things, drop glasses or plates, accidentally get permanent marker on things...these sorts of things don't really hurt laminate. Glasses will often not break on laminate. Laminate does not easily stain does not easy chip if you drop normal things on its, Lemonade will not etch laminate. Drinks or jam will not stain laminate. On the other hand. laminate will burn if you set a hot pan on it. But kids are not generally taking hot pans off the stove or out of the oven without supervision. Not anymore anyway, I remember baking when I was pretty young but that's beside the point. Now stone is much more resistant to the sort of things adults do, like cook with hot pans, use the broiler, cut with sharp knives etc. But adults generally know better than kids about "properties" of something, are generally more thorough about cleaning up and things like that. But stone does etch and stain from routine spills, and it may be hard to get permanent marker out of stone. Plus stone is possibly more expensive, and the more expensive the stone, maybe the more delicate it actually is, and the more people feel "invested" in its pristineness. So it's kind of backwards, in a way. It can be more susceptible to the relatively minor accidents that kids may have (not noticing lemonade?) and more durable when it comes to things that adults know how to manage anyway. (except for the people who expect indestructible).