Granite!

To begin the post - here is what we picked for the kitchen:

Moon Night Granite

And for the master bath vanity:

Not sure of the name

(There's some dust on it but you can still see what it looks like)

Now, if you're curious, here's the story of how we got here.

Ever since we first started planning our house, I knew what I wanted our kitchen counters to look like.  I love the look of carrera marble, but I know it's not the most practical for a kitchen.  I also love the granite on my sister's kitchen island, which is pretty white with black and white specks and a lot of movement.  It looks great.

I told Arthur I was looking for a white granite similar to carrera marble.  The granite guy first dropped off three samples on Tuesday.  Of the three, I only really liked one of them.  Two of them had too much black, and I didn't like the movement in them.  One of them looked really nice but didn't have enough movement in it.  I decided to consider it for the master bathroom.  (Sorry, I don't have pictures or names).

On Thursday the granite guy dropped off another sample of Kashmir White granite.  I thought I might like it, but I really couldn't tell from the small sample.  It didn't tell me what the movement would look like and what the variations in color could be from the slab.  I explained my hesitation to Arthur regarding picking a granite from such a small sample, and Friday afternoon he sent me the addresses of stoneyards that had slabs I could go to.  This was at 4:00, and I knew that most of them weren't open on Saturday, but I noticed that several were only a few miles from my office.  I called the granite guy, he told me where the samples had come from, and then I called that stoneyard and found out they close at 4:30.  So I told them I'd be there in 8 minutes and to wait for me!

I got there just in time (4:20) and was able to look at several slabs.

First, we looked at the White Kashmir that my sample came from:

I liked it, and I liked the movement in it more than I did in the sample, but I still wanted to see a few more.  He showed me the rest of the slabs that fit in the "White" Granite category, several of which are definitely out of our budget.  Here are two of the ones I kind of liked, but we probably couldn't afford:

Not a fan of the movement in this one....

And this one was a little too creamy.

Then he said, oh, and we have this one that has a lot of gray:

I was very excited when I saw it.  It's pretty, has great movement, very similar to coloring of carrera marble, and should be a reasonable price.  I wasn't 100% sure I wanted this one over the Kashmir White, but my gut instinct was excitement.

We also stopped by the slab of the original sample I liked that I was considering for the master bathroom:

After getting an opinion from Amy, who told me to go with the one that my instinct was most excited about, I then discussed the options with Kyle.  He agreed with me, and liked the coloring of the Moon Night the most.  So we emailed Arthur our final decisions - Moon Night for the kitchen, and the sample for the master bathroom.

Done, right?  Not quite.  We went to the house this afternoon while the granite guy was measuring and creating templates for our counters, and he said we should pick another stone for the master bath.  The one we had picked only comes in full slabs, so we'd have to buy a whole slab for a small space.  And we don't like wasting money like that.  He said we should go by his office to pick out one of the remnant pieces he has that is large enough for our vanity sometime next week.  Unfortunately - we're going to be out of town all week next week.  And it needs to be installed next week.  So he was kind enough to let me meet him there this afternoon. 

It took me forever to find the place, but once I did it didn't take too long to pick out the stone.  I was wavering between two stones, but couldn't really tell which one I liked, because it was really hard to see since it was kind of stacked with and leaning against a bunch of other stones.

But then he showed it to me on the large stone saw he uses, since he had been working on it for someone else's counters.  And I loved it!

It's kind of hard to see in the picture, because there is some dust and stuff on it, but there's a really pretty flowing movement.  It's a tan/cream color, and should look good with the travertine in our bathroom.  

And those are our final granite decisions!