yep, stunning. I been drawing something similar for a while and it's awesome to see your ab fab results after your OP. I got interested in some ikea solid timber benchtops, not nearly as nice as yours, and thought I'd combo them with black cabinets, white stone and white walls (just a "what if" design). so I totally love your kitchen. it's great how well the tiles look now compared to when you first posted, they really excite me! and the lightshades against the black wall. and what's that dining area I see? that smoked glass table top with timber trestles and black chairs and that black and white rug? where you get those?! I want to see more! congratulations, it's hard not to gush! big ups to Mldesign too.

I probably would steer away from black if you want to keep the country theme

Your view may be the wow factor- You may be better to put your wow into the splash back as ultimately it is less expensive to change. A total rebuild has many areas for cost over runs so with a large area, I would look at your overall budget and how much you are allocating for bench tops - This will help determine what you can afford and ultimately your choices. Depending on the surface dark benches can be harder to keep looking clean. I suggest you borrow some samples and bring them home - wet them and wipe them etc

We've got a gatic style pit lid on our exposed aggregate driveway. You can fill these pit lids with a material like exposed aggregate/concrete and sand etc. to make the pits blend a bit better with the driveway. A couple of driveway people have said that using exposed agg there just doesn't work well due to the inability to get exposed agg even and looking good on the pit lid. Other people have said it looks bad if you don't fill it with exposed agg because that would be different to the driveway. Just wondering if anyone has done this in the past and what they went with? We would've thought exposed agg for the continuity of things but now we aren't sure. Thanks in advance!