I like options 4 and 5 best, 4 being my favorite.

What if you use #1 and #4? I can't see the blemish on #4, so I'm ignoring it.

There's a lot of us using white Macaubus in our kitchens lately!! Love it!!

I would not mix lots in the same vicinity. We didn't have quite enough of our remaining WM to do both the facing of our living room fireplace (open to the kitchen) and the hearth. So the awesome stone yard owner swapped my remnant for a slab of another lot which looked good with my island slab but had softer veining. Perfect. We show up after install to find our remnant on the face and his slab on the hearth....not what we agreed to. Even though both were WM and looked good together from a distance, when close together you could clearly see that the white background of one had more gray while the other didn't. My stone had darker charcoal lines while the other slab had lighter lines. They came about twenty minutes after my GC and I arrived and ripped off the facing. The correct slab was put on the next day. I say don't mix lots.

Since you're going for modern, I'd go with 4. It has a more linear look to it. It's gorgeous. We also had a strange orangey splotchy area in one of our corners. We cut around it with no problems.

Good luck!

And don't forget to have them write your name in marker on the slabs! Watch them do it! Take pictures. There are too many sad stories here about "The" granite that mysteriously disappeared.

4 and 5. I like the ones with varying vertical lines

I like 2 and 5 best. HTH! Love the description of your kitchen- can't wait to see it!

Hi Kay. Making progress! And some pretty slab choices.

Do you have a sample of the walnut veneer to hold up with the beautiful quartzite to make sure the veining doesn't complete with the walnut grain?

i like all but option 1 because it has that heavy streak running down the horizontal lines, almost like a crack? your kitchen is going to look amazing! can't wait to see it!

I like #4, but the others are nice as well.

Clarygrace, thanks. I'm leaning the same way at this point.

Suzanna, I will be taking my Sharpie with me to tag my slabs if they don't. (I might lick them too!) I will take lots of pictures of the slabs and the slab numbers on the edges of the slabs, as well as making sure the numbers are on my receipt. It's too hard to find "the one" to let it get away.

Babs, I think you are right about not mixing slabs. When I first saw it in March, Option 1 was the first lot of WM that I really liked in several months of looking. I was kicking myself for not reserving 2 slabs of it, which is why I was trying to figure out how to use the 1 available slab. The more I look at the pictures, I think I would be happy with option 4 or 5 also.

Bahacca, I like the varying vertical lines too. I think I have to knock #2 out because that vertical line right down the center drives me nuts every time I look at it.

Briana, #5 is a strong contender.

Breezy, good to "see" you. Yes, progress is so exciting. I have a small sample of the walnut that you can see in picture #3. I think the grain patterns will be ok with any of these slabs.

Michou, I see what you mean about #1. I can't wait to see it either!

Jgopp, #4 is also a strong contender.

Thanks for the input, everyone. I am giving up on slab #1 rather than trying to mix lots. 2 and 3 were never favorites - I was just considering them because they were at the same yard as #1 and I thought one of them might be ok for the perimeter counters.

So, now it comes down to 4 and 5. I am drawn to both of them for opposite reasons. I like that 5 feels a bit more "organic" (more like marble) because the horizontal lines are more varied and don't all look uniform. I think it would look really great on the island. On the other hand, the more regularly spaced lines of 4 might look better on the 26" deep perimeter counters. 4 would also make a dramatic island, just a bit different in feel than 5.

Is it just my imagination, or do 1 and 5 look a bit like book-matched slabs? The horizontal veining pattern is very similar, as are some of the vertical lines. I would not be surprised if they came from the same block of stone and just ended up at different stone yards.

kay,

Have you asked Tutto Marmo to show you all the slabs in their lot yet? You might find as they move through the lot you'll see two that really knock you out. We used White Macaubas in our kitchen (a different vendor on Miramar, though) but our last granite came from TM. They were great with us and we finally found the perfect slabs, 7 back from the front!

I like 2 and 5, also. I also like 3. The prefer random patterning instead of parallel lines in 4, and #1 has the problem of being from another lot, and that vertical streak that looks like a break and a bad patch job to me.

Kiffgirl, TM has about 15 slabs of WM right now. I am going back tomorrow with my designer to look. I wonder how many of those 15 slabs they would be willing to pull out for me to see. I bought slabs from them for my last house back in 2005. Who did you buy your WM from?

Rhome, I see what you mean about #1. I am torn between the random and regular patterns. DH weighed in today that he likes 3 and 4, because he does not like the vertical "cross hatching" of the other 3.

Well I think I'm the odd person out here. My least favourite are 3 & 4 - because they are so uniform I guess. But I do understand why your husband might favour them and I see the logic in the choice.

All five slabs certainly offer a linear, modern look and all five would likely work quite well, but I find 2, 5 and1 the most interesting. I have the same counters and I particularly love the dark slahes through my counters, and the 'fissures' or vertical streaks as rhome called them. I think they are the most interesting part of the counters.

A few favourite shots of my counters so you can see what I mean: see the dark slashes revealed around the edge of the prep sink:

You can kind of see one of my vertical streaks or slashes here - it looks very cool up close, not like a bad patch job (to my eye anyway), but I was worried about that when I first saw the slab. Very happy I have it on my counter now.

I'd probably go for two or five I think.

Sochi, thanks for the close-ups of your counter. I do like the vertical streaks that create variation. I am drawn to #5, as I was to #1. #2 I am not sure about. There are elements of it I like, but I would have to position the cut outs carefully to arrange the vertical veins so there is not one right in the center of the island, as that bugs me on the slab to have a streak dead center rather than more "randomly" placed.

I am very curious to see what my designer will think when we visit the stone yards tomorrow.

On a related note, while I am excited about the WM counters, I dread trying to pick a BS that looks good with it.

Well I still don't have a backsplash, so keep me posted on how you do! I'm taking a year off work starting next week, so I'm hoping some time during that year I might be able to tackle the backsplash question.

Oh Sochi, there's that kitchen again!

How did things go at TM? I'm pretty sure they would show you all 15 if you asked!

We got ours from Marmol. At the time we purchased, they were the ONLY yard in town with WM. We had finally decided to settle on a different stone but felt one more round of visits on our way to purchase would put our minds at ease. Angels sang when I rounded the corner and finally founds them locally! Couldn't buy them fast enough.

Are we still voting?

I like 5 for this reason, if your kitchen counter makes a 90 degree turn, like an L, then the pattern might "blend" better. Otherwise with the straight lines, when you make the turn, the lines will be pointing at you instead of side to side.

They all are beautiful though!

Update: My designer and I went to view 4 & 5. While she agreed the patterning on 5 was interesting, she thought the tonal variations of the shades of white in 4 was better. 4 was also DH's favorite. There are 15 contiguous numbered slabs of #4, so DH and I made an appt. with the stone yard to go pull out more slabs over lunch tomorrow. Although I expect the slabs to be similar, there may be some variations that make some slabs more pleasing to us than others. I am hoping the yellowish area on the far right of the top slab does not appear on all the slabs in that lot. Maybe some of the lower slabs have a little more variation in the lines too.

Kiffgirl, I looked at Marmol too. They have some nice cross cut WM now, which I considered before deciding on the vein cut.

BKW, we do not have any 90 degree turns to deal with. The 2 perimeter runs will be separated by a French door to the side yard. (No seams required - yay!) Taking stripes around a corner was certainly something I worried about when we were originally planning an L configuration.

Does anyone know where I can find this type of quartzite in the San Francisco Bay Area????

Kristieschultz--pretty sure MSI in Hayward has some. Also saw a few kinds of white quartzite at Bedrosians in San Jose, Da Vinvi Marble in San Carl's and IRG in Brisbane.

Check out IRG in Brisbane or Dublin, Da Vinci in San Carlos, Pietra Fina in Hayward, and Intertile in San Leandro. That is where I remember seeing the most Quartzite.