we wanted the marble to work - we performed some tests on the samples that we had of the carrara and the danby marble. the etching wasn't horrible, but we were worried about maintenance issues for future resale. we liked soapstone but were also worried about durability in a kitchen. the local soapstone also had a green tint that we did not care for. we decided to explore other options. mike was open to granite, but i had not found a granite that i liked. we moved on to man made products like quartz. we couldn't agree on color - i liked the more uniform gray quartz, mike liked the ones with more of a pattern.

so then i went to the most expensive counter top place in town. just to see... maybe extra money could buy us the perfect thing? and i saw the green slab of something that i actually really liked. except it was green. it was with the granite, but didn't look like granite. the salesperson informed me it was quartzite. quartzite tends to be much more subtle than most granites. it looked softer to me. and it wasn't all sparkly. i had asked a few places about quartzites at the beginning of our search but no one seemed to have them or have much experience with them. this salesperson didn't have any gray quartzites, but sent me the image below of a slab that she could get from nebraska:

the color is called "super white" - and i loved it. except it was in nebraska. and expensive. so i started over, going back to the biggest granite/marble distributer in town. turns out they had a few super white slabs in stock. i went to go see them a few weeks ago:

the color is perfect in person, it's a really nice earthy gray. but the slabs they had in stock were not as subtle as i would have liked. since we weren't in a hurry to get our countertop, i nicely asked the guy when they were getting another shipment. turns out they were scheduled for another shipment the following week, and he was able to show me this image from the new shipment:

we loved it! we put our name first on the list to get one of the new slabs, and when they came in last week we quickly made an appointment to see the new shipment.

and here it is, our new countertop...

we both love it, and i'm so excited to see it in our kitchen. we went ahead and put a deposit down so that they will hold that specific slab for us. i was also about to bring my paint samples and pick out a "white" for the cabinets, so it was a succesful trip!