Hi iggs85. I see your point re cost and how you think it may look. I'll attach a photo of one of my semi-recessed basins in stone. We had to use semi-recessed due to space restrictions as well. The benches are 440. Are yours narrower? I did Google stone benchtop offcuts. eBay has some in marble and granite. There appear to be businesses that do sell offcuts. Anyway, I think you would certainly be able to find a beautiful laminate you like. There is such a wide range. There are also some that look so much like stone. Will you have vanity cabinets/drawers under the benchtop? If so, what are your thoughts there? Same laminate or different? Have you visited any shops yet to look at samples?

Hi Adrienne. Since I wrote my comment I have been to the caeserstone showroom in Melbourne and I questioned them about the staining. The lady was really good and explained the material and how is it very resistant to staining. Also she said that pretty much anything will stain any kind of stone bench top and even more so, if you let the stain sit and soak in. She gave me two sample pieces of the airy concrete and also a sample bottle of their stone bench cleaner. She said to spill something in one of the samples and test out the cleaner. To be honest I haven’t done that yet. But a friend of mine said they used it when they spilt red wine on white stone bench and concrete flooring and used the cleaner. He said that you wouldn’t even know that the wine was spilt, no stain at all. I’m still going with it. I just love it. Fell more in love with it when I saw the huge slab of it at the caeserstone showroom!!

Magdoline, another option is to have all benchtops white or light coloured, the island and full-wall cabinetry in a dark material, and all your other cabinets white/light coloured (Incl those in B’s pantry). OR all joinery in B‘s pantry in same dark material as island and full-wall cabinetry. A mixture of light & dark joinery can be very striking.

what happened to the old column? i think you need to add a corner cabinet (900 on the stove wall and 1050 on the sink wall) with doors hinged across the corner provides 300 + 450 wide doors and better access to the corner for storage of big appliances and to allow more space for the drawers to open, the 1000 fridge space allows an air gap and two 750 wide drawers next to the 900 wide stove, i've kept the 1200 gap between benches and island and added a cabinet (opening toward the sink allows for a 600 wide 450 deep space for a bin) then two 750 wide drawers and the built in microwave making a longer island and extra drawers next to the dishwasher ...in my experience, if you're having custom made cabinets you only need to specify the size of appliances and sink, the general layout of the room and your preferred arrangements and approximate sizes and the cabinet maker should measure the site and custom make the cabinets to suit the space with minor alteration to allow for any obstacles eg like making the pantry cabinets narrower to allow for architraves around the entry door..and it's more comfortable to walk around if the pantry doesn't overlap the architrave or encroach on the doorway