I think the marble naysayers have jumped on the bandwagon without really living with the stone. I have statuary in my bathrooms and love it. Most stains can be removed with a simple baking soda and water poultice. Acid etching is harder to deal with since it removes the polished surface, but its part of having a living stone in your home. If it becomes too bad, you can have it repolished. With a darker stone, you won't have as many issues as a white marble. In order to really know if you can live with it, I suggest you get a small sample of the stone and do some tests. Here is an example. http://www.dohiy.com/2013/04/21/marble-countertops-the-post-acid-test/ Please note that she used bleach and oxyclean to clean the stone after her test. Stay away from both since they can etch the stone just as much as an acidic food. Instead, clean with a ph neutral cleaner like isopropyl alcohol (rubbing alcohol), and for heavy stains, the baking soda poultice mentioned above. You have to remember that marble has been used for centuries as flooring, table tops, countertops, etc. throughout the world and most of these installations are still here and aren't stained and etched to the point that it has been ripped out and replaced. Just think about all of he luxury hotels in Europe and how many times they have been exposed to Hangover type guests without any damage.

Hi Sharmilaks, My experience with glass is that it will scratch eventually and being such a high gloss marks will show. I would agree with DVG and have a look at Quartz Stone or Composite stone such brands as Compac, Quartz Forms, Diresco, Quarelle, Caesarstone, Arena stone, Uni Stone, Cimstone.

Hi! I'm so glad I came across your floor plan, got pretty excited and ideas started flooding. Firstly, I'm uploading a draft of a floor plan I made as a rough copy (with a pencil and a paper), so kindly excuse the imperfections. (please refer to the picture I've posted along with this.) Secondly, as you mentioned, you would want to include the balcony in your seating area, I recommend you to break the wall and instead use French windows to allow the light within and it'll also feel very open. Then, about the kitchen, as you said you wouldn't want a large dining area, you could take that space for an open kitchen, where the counter also serves as the dining space from the outside. And since, the kitchen would be made towards the direction of the arrow pointed (refer to the pic) we get ample space to make a Pooja room. And to give an enclosed feel to the living room I chose and L shaped couch for it. I would suggest you to go for a mounted TV on a rotatable stand on the wall so that its accessible from anywhere across the room. Having done that, we are still left with some space (marked with a circle in the pic ) which could be used to put some more seats for the living room OR... (THIS IS MY FAV PART IN A HOUSE!) you could also use that space to mount a swing from the top. There were few more probabilities to do this house, but I genuinely found this one to be the best, coz I'm a huge fan of open spaces, and it's a good layout a lot of things could be done with it. All the best.

The main sink is right on the corner -- only one place to put things down. Behind the sink is not a great option. Other sink -- prep sink? hand-washing sink? bar sink? seems to be too fancy and not very practical for a kitchen space. Save that kind of sink for a guest powder room. Any sink in a hard-working kitchen needs to be flexible and purposeful. The exhaust fan above the cooktop seems too high up and not wide enough. Trust me -- mine is not wide enough, and I wish it was, but at least it's not too high up. I appreciate in this sleek, modern design, you want a very low profile exhaust fan. But -- you need the capture area to be wider than your cooktop so you can capture all the grease, steam, and smoke. One advantage you have is that there are no cabinets there to limit the width of your exhaust fan -- so widen it up. It's a must in a hard-working kitchen, especially one with a somewhat open floor plan. I don't know how you will use your kitchen or what the rest of your home is like. You may value a sleek, beautiful kitchen way more than a hard-working, efficient space, in which case, most of my comments are lower priority.