Granite

While I'm still unhappy with our cabinets, I am IN LOVE with our granite. It is amazing. Beautiful. Perfect. We started looking for countertops before anything else in this project. We were leaning towards a white countertop so we started looking at quartz. We got a lot of feedback from stone companies and installers while we researched the stuff and one thing was for sure - people prefer to work with granite. We came away with the thought that granite is better because it's natural, looks natural, has a lot of different options and will stand the test of time.

I was kind of disappointed at first when we decided granite was the way to go. I was really looking forward to an all-white kitchen. But then we started looking around and found if we searched well, we could find something we really wanted. What I didn't want was something like these:

Not my style at all. Not my husband's style either. He would love to put marble in everywhere but marble is not made for the kitchen so that's out. 

I knew I wanted more of a streaky look than a splotchy look like the ones in the above picture. I took many lunch hours to go look at what the many companies around here offered. I thought I had finally narrowed it down when I found one last company who had a slab come in that I fell in love with. I told the owner's son what I was looking for. He called me the day the slabs came in and I went to see them. He listened to me and he figured out what I wanted. And what they had was exactly what I wanted. He sent me a picture of their new slabs of Himalayan White. 

Perfect! It's smooth and has the streaks I was looking for. We went the next morning to look at it. Not only was it gorgeous from far away, up close it was even better. It showed other bits of stone inside of it. It was just what we wanted. I was so excited. We went ahead and booked the granite guys that we chose and scheduled them to come out and measure the night the cabinet people were done.

This company was so great to work with. Not only did they call us when they had a slab they thought we would love come in, they had us come out and check the slab after they laid out their template. We were able to see exactly what portions of the slab would go where in the kitchen. And they showed us the seam (which is almost invisible now that it is installed). 

They came on Wednesday and it is even better than I had hoped for. 

Close up of some of the granite details

The gorgeous island

The sink

The one thing I haven't yet mentioned is the sink. Our beautiful, rectangular, not rounded sink. How gorgeous is it? And the faucet, as well. It was one of the few faucets I could find that wasn't bulbous in some way or another. I love all of the clean lines. It's perfect. I love cleaning dishes now - no more barrier in the middle of the sink to work with! We had to spend a little more to get the industrial sink but it was so, so worth it.