Ae2ga contacted me off line soliciting more substantive critique on her board. Apparently we weren't critical enough--step up, people! :) So I took her tile and design elements and did a couple boards. I thought that her underlying problem was that it is hard to use two vivid, contrasting colors in a design in balanced quantities and intensities without making it look like a college sports jersey (Go Cal Bears!). So I did one design where I let blues predominate and one where I let yellows take the lead, although a lot of the elements are the same. I focused on the color balance, and the styles of the different elements don't work together as well as I would like. It was devilishly hard finding things in the right color, let alone the right color and style. Anyway, feel free to rip these apart and let ae2ga know what you really think works and what doesn't with her tile. Floor: .....Yellow: Checkered Marmoleum in Butter and White Marble .....Blue: Daltile Micro Flecks in Moonlight Swim Cabinets: Kraftmaid square raised panel maple in Cinnamon Cabinet Hardware: Plymouth knob and Allison antique brass pull from eknobsandpulls.com Range: Bluestar in blue Counter: .....Yellow: Silestone Yellow Dream .....Blue: Silestone Blue Enjoy Tile: Ae2ga's tile Rangehood: Frigidaire stainless chimney hood Paint: Benjamin Moore Barely Yellow Rug: .....Yellow: Blue oriental rug from therugfactory.com .....Blue: Fronter Moroccan ivory & yellow hand-woven wool rug from Zinc Door Table: From ae2ga's pic, sorry for the loss of resolution Chairs: Furniture Classics English country ladderback side chair from homefurnitureshowroom.com (chosen to resemble ae2ga's, which lost too much resolution to use) Art: Bridge in City Park by Charles Woodward Hutson, ca 1910-1920, from 1stDibs.com Frame: .....Yellow: Paint swatch of Color Guild Galaxy Blue from myperfectcolor.com .....Blue: Paint swatch of Benjamin Moore Midnight Navy from myperfectcolor.com Lighting: .....Yellow: Ikat batik drum pendant from ShadesofLight.com .....Blue: All yellow giclee pendant chandelier from eurostylelighting.com (this is the wrong yellow and wrong style, but I couldn't find anything that really worked)

You need to test it to make sure it's quartzite and not marble. Quartzite won't etch and if you take a corner and try to scratch a glass it will. Marble won't scratch a glass.

Thanks for the reference to this thread dan. I've read through all of Karin's threads previously and do plan to test the quartzite myself, but I'm really interested in people who have real life experience with it. I also would like to find any alternate names so I can look at more pictures online (for ideas re backsplash, floor, etc that others have used) as I can't find very many of Monaco quartzite.

thank you @MinnesotaMary! This is very helpful. Your daughter's kitchen is gorgeous. I'm glad to hear you say that there is some warmth to it because I definitely was hoping for that. Also, I want something with subtle veins because the usual Calacattas with huge grey veins doesn't suit me - this feels more "real" to me! I've been to see so many slabs including Silestone, Cambria, etc and i really wanted to go with one of the "high end" quartz brands but I keep liking this MSI one the best!