Countertop collywobbles ...

I went back to a store today that has Caesarstone Misty Carrera installed on a large kitchen island - to see a large expanse of it - and all I can say is, eh. It's kind of dull, in every sense - greyish and matte and boring. And it would look dingy next to a bright white farmhouse sink. The Caesarstone Rosemary (which they had a large sample of, but no installation) wasn't grabbing me either.

Maybe it's time to look again at natural stone. I wandered into their back lot and - aha! - a green serpentine hissed at me from a nearby tree - "here, take this apple" - no, wait, wrong story; but it was that seductive.

I don't think I want that piece of serpentine - for one thing it's foreign-sourced (if I use stone, I want it to be mined in Vermont, not Taiwan), for another because they wanted to charge me an awful lot of money for it (I think they added an extra $500 as soon as I mentioned Manhattan).

But why not serpentine? Sure it's kind of loud and outré - but I only have 17 sq. ft. total counterspace, and it'll be horizontal (I don't want a stone backsplash). And I swoon over the green-on-green. (The only other granites I've liked at all have been green - though more in the smushed-peas range.)

Serpentine is technically a marble, not a granite - but its chemical composition means that it doesn't react to acid the way marble does. It's pretty much impervious, I believe it doesn't get sealed, and it stays shiny even on the outside of buildings. It has a rich, mysterious, Versailles or Hermitage look to me.

Of course my tiling plan is all boulversé now - after much experimentation in the store, I discovered that you can't really use any field tile next to it except a light zen-tea green (not that I mind tea green, in fact it's one of my favorite decorating colors) ... which means what, exactly, for the deco tiles? Hmmm.

Here are some pictures of Vermont-sourced serpentine. It seems less wildly veiny than the Taiwan stuff I saw, which is probably a good thing:

What do you think?