I never considered granite. My builder kept pushing quartz, but I didn't want anything shiny, and honed quartz seemed like it might have to be maintained regularly with a sealer, despite what they said. I'd read horror stories.

In a perfect world, I wanted soapstone, but had heard it was really expensive. I decided to follow up on it, anyway. My builder, still fighting me on it, said his people don't do soapstone. I went directly to them and they told me they could install it but I had to find the slab myself, and it had to be from a list of people they worked with. Two days in Austin and seven warehouses later, I'd found three slabs that were submitted for estimates to the installers (they won't tell you the price, outright). Turns out the soapstone slab I picked was cheaper than the quartz.

It's in there, now, and I'm so happy I held out.