The Beiers Build a House: Countertops!!!!

Our countertops have finally been installed! We absolutely LOVE them! Here's the funny story behind them:

So... When we first started looking for countertops we thought it would be super hip and modern to have stainless steel with an integrated sink. This option proved to be A: hard to find, and B: out of our budget. We then moved on to the thoughts of Silestone (a manmade quartz product) but that too was a bit overpriced for what you were getting and still not quite what we wanted.

Completely flabbergasted after looking at what seemed to be thousands of samples of silestone, caesarstone, zodiac, granite, concrete, stainless steel, recycled paper resin and highly polished fossilized dinosaur dung - (ok, I made that last one up) - Olga decided that we should, nay, MUST go to a granite yard to look for a slab "that speaks to us." I thought this was some sort of new-age weirdo type of suggestion and logically thought that, between trips to every counter top installer and counter top website, we MUST have seen EVERY type of hard surface on top of which to chop, dice, wipe, and repeat. Finally, after avoiding the trip to the granite yard for the 5th time or so, I said "Olga! What do you expect to find?!? Some sort of crazy ALIEN granite from outer space that we've never seen before?!?!"

Well... thats exactly what we found. Here are the pictures:

it's called "Black Morgan" aka "Black Marinace"

take one part river bed, one part petrified sand, add a million tons of pressure and bake for a few millions years. just take out a slice or two, cut and polish, and viola! alien granite! and yes, Olga, you were right... again.

here is the granite for the wet bar, it's called "Kashmir White." It's actually more of a grey with little flecks of mica and some red stone. it's hard to do it justice with pictures.