I think your benchtop material choice really depends on how both you and your husband live and what level of natural wear you are comfortable with showing. Natural wood benchtops to me are very similar to natural stone or stainless steel. The surfaces will naturally age and show use, scratches and imperfections much more than say a caesarstone if it's a high use area but some people love that look and it goes well with an industrial or natural style. My wife and I thought long and hard about it but realised we want the benchtop to look as new and clean each time as possible so opted back for caeserstone (Ocean Foam) which hid small stains and dust :)

Hi White Elk, that's helpful although not exactly what I was wanting to do. What I am hoping to do is have a microwave above a double oven. Don't want microwave to be higher than 1450mm at the most, and preferably at 1400 and double oven is 895mm, so base of oven would be at about 500. There some photos in houzz which are bit helpful, but I was wondering if anyone had a similar set-up to what I'm describing. Thanks MmQc

Hi there, we just do a wipe down every day for cleanliness ( can still see some marks with this) and a wipe and buff once a week to look as new. We have red wine, turmeric, beetroot, coffee drips, grey ‘pencil’ scrapes from plates. Oils are pretty much a daily addition on our benches too, and as it is also our backsplash it gets tomato sauce, spatters etc from cooking. All disappear with the wipe and buff method except for the pencil type marks which I use another Enjo product called marble paste on then follow up with the usual routine. I think you may have to make the hard decision between the fresh concrete look or a stone that shows less marks in certain lights- choose whichever feature will make you the happiest in the long term. Either way you will love your new space.

@Mc10 - We are also recirculating - and we are venting this through a gap in the kickboard where we will eventually also install a mesh / metal grill to keep bugs out etc. When the extractors in full flight it does throw out quite a breeze so make sure wherever you decide to vent isn’t somewhere that will annoy people who are sat - luckily where we vented is into where people just walk though. We hardly lost any storage if you look at the pic I posted what looks like the first drawer at the top is what we boxed in to price clearance and access - I think it was about 15 cms - not that significant as lots of storage space elsewhere.