counter offer.

so we had a plan for our kitchen from the get-go: we wanted to go a different direction from our last kitchen's dark cabs, and instead go light, bright + more modern. with an industrial edge. kinda like so, as seen on HGTV's site.

or like so. love the fresh + crisp feeling this image from Apartment Therapy evokes:

all along we'd been planning on white painted cabinets, in combination with the dark asian walnut hardwood we'd fallen for. as for the countertop material we really wanted something sleek + minimalist....i love quartz for this look, as you get the cool, shiny surface of stone but without all the veins or distractions of granite. [you also get built-in stain and bacteria protection. bonus!]

here was my #1 pick:
silestone's unsui - part of the zen collection. i loved that while it was a clean, totally plain look, it wasn't too cold looking. i'd also seen this used in one of candice olsen's designs and thought it looked so smooth and chic!

however, as we rounded the corner on the very LAST phase of building this spring, we were kindly informed that we could NOT in fact get this option after all [yes, we had asked all manner of questions along the way to try and avoid this situation]....the slab size apparently would not fit our island shape + size. this was wonderful news to receive, the day the paint had gone up on the walls further cementing the color scheme....which was based on the unsui tops! ugh.

so we received the shortlist of available options that would fit our island [i wasn't too keen on visually breaking up the look of the tops between island + outer area]. most of them looked like this:

or this:
ummmm, no thank you. so i was thrilled beyond belief when THIS color was on the list, in all its pseudo-polished-concrete glory!!!

silestone: grey expo

i was a tiny bit hesitant because of the possible 'cold' look mentioned earlier. but funny enough, i had a sample at home since it had been on the early debate list - and looking at the 4"x4" square, i realized it was meant to be! ....a happy accident.

since kevin and i simply must research things before acting, we did make we sure had some online assurance of this stone's overall appeal. thanks to a couple of galleries we stumbled across, like jenschulze's on flickr, we could uncross our fingers and take the leap.

a little dust wasn't going to deter us! we knew this color would be just right. [we did also take the sample square to the house, since often the color of paint, carpet + other materials will change in different lighting and every room seems to get its own strength of natural light]

aaaand here it is, in the new house!
it may be hard to see, but we requested the very SQUARE-est edge that they could possibly cut, barring anything that would injure us or our future offspring, of course. usually when you go for clean or modern looks the items are inexplicably at the top of the price scale....thankfully with quartz + granite, squared off edges are the least expensive choice. yippee!

and an action shot....i was going for that super slick Dwell magazine look. my mom makes a greal model, doesn't she?



banana-zucchini bread + one very high maintenance ikea towel


and to round out the rest of the kitchen....can't live without these!

hey everybody, come see how good i look!


so what do you think? did we achieve the modern-industrial kitchen aesthetic i had hoped for?
as far as the grey countertop, i think it's right at home.