Why didn't you remove the vertical corner wood trim piece on the left, install the granite to fit, then cut the trim to fit around the granite. Perhaps there was no room to move the granite to the right then slide it in and to the left to fit around that corner.

X2 @ what SJD said.

Have your contractor come look at it. This installer is trying to give you wrong answers for his poor, sloppy job.

At this point I would buy a wood panel to match the wood on the left in the picture, stain it and cut to fit covering the gap. You could run a small bead of clear caulk along the granite wood edge to finish it.

You can get scribe molding matching your cabinet finish, it's exactly same thickness as the reveal on the panel.

Totally unacceptable. I had the granite company send out three different teams of installers before the install was acceptable.

Thank you ttabal. There was room to move the granite from the right to then slide to the left. He told me that would of been impossible, because of hard points?? The installers did not recommend nor offer to notch out the existing corner wood trim during installation? I even quoted industry specs from the Marble Institute of America page 6 Joints at Materials Transitions. Visible joints between stone and other material (e.g. cabinetry, wall board) shall be 1/8", with a tolerance of plus or minus of 1/16" This works out to a maximum acceptable gap of 3/16". My gap is ranging from 3/16 " to 1/2". I have this issue on both sides of my kitchen cabinets!!! He would not offer to do anything except give me a granite back splash to install over it. He felt that he made it clear to me, that this is what it would look like. I made it clear to him that I did not want a granite back splash on the sides of my cabinets before installation. My fight is: you said a small space (the size of the space was never discussed on template day... I thought I could grout or use a small piece of trim and I mean a small piece of trim.. something that would not stand out, he assured me it would be a very small piece of trim.I didn't realize that a 1/2" is considered small to him.......After reviewing industry standards and what people are saying it seems to me that he did not template the job right......It seems to me, he could of worked around the cabinets and I should have a grout joint line, not a 1/2"space???

He also did not take into consideration when making my template that the original counter of tiled granite was sitting on plywood. Hence my back splash that I was adamant about keeping, now has a gap between it and the new counter top. The gap is to large to grout and to small for a piece of trim molding. He assured me I would be able to either grout or use a coordinating piece of trim to match my existing back splash. Unfortunately neither one of those options are viable. He admitted today that he didn't realize it was on plywood.... (WTfrick what did he think the tile was adhered to??) I had even asked the installers to leave the plywood and install the new slab over it so I would not have a gap. They would not accommodate my request.... Because of this debacle I thought they should pay for the bottom row of travertine to be removed and have a new row installed. He said no would not pay for it. Finally after fighting he offered a $250 credit to use towards the removal of the travertine back splash bottom row. Which covers nothing for this type of work to be done. I'm so upset with how the whole situation has played out. We spent $14,000 with their company... 3 slabs of granite large area, just this area has issues. The rest of job is okay. I'm trying to determine if this job was done right or wrong. Trying to decide what direction to go with American Express. I'm very disappointed and feel that he did a good job weaseling his way out of this debacle.

Did one slab covered that whole span of the counter from the Fridge to the Appliance Garage? If they managed that done with one slab which I doubt, I can see why they did that now, because you have to notch both ends to fit that in and that slab is to heavy to lift to make it fit in place, especially with the stove cut out... it could easily snap at the cut out.

If they did that with 2 slabs it could have easily be notched on both ends to make it look like this:

As I said before, you can install scribe molding matching your cabinets along that edge, you can get a piece from your manufacturer and one piece will be enough to do along the Fridge and along Appliance Garage on both sides. In any case is a good practice to install scribe molding along these edges which is only 1/4" thick (size of the cabinet edge reveal) x 7/8" high, it gives a finished appearance and it will look something like this:

Good luck and by the way you have a beautiful kitchen.

You had incorrect expectations about what a counter fabricator can and should do.

The cabinets are incorrectly done. They need a skin for the side to be flush. Or should have been ordered flush from the factory. Or your GC should have taken care of that flaw detail prior to templating. Or they should install scribe molding post install.

Counter fabricators don't do cabinet alterations. Nor do they ever promise that you can keep an existing backslash. Especially with the height difference between tile and stone counters. That wasn't reasonable to expect unless your GC created custom buildup for underneath the stone to raise it up. That isn't a some fabricator's responsibility.

Gn Builders thank you for the advice and sharing the pictures. I have 1 seam down the middle of the cook top and 1 seam to the right of the appliance garage. I believe they used 2 slabs for the area. Its a total of 3 pieces that they used. My worry is I might need to use a larger piece of scribe molding. 1/4" scribe, may not cover the gap. The gap is over a 1/2" wide in certain places. When using a piece of scribe molding that's larger will cause the finished end to not sit flush on the corner edge reveal.......This is why I'm so disappointed, I was told it would be a small gap.... enough to clear the reveal corner edge. I hate the thought of having to use a larger piece of trim to hide his poor template that caused this issue. How large (long) is the piece of granite in your kitchen that scribes around the corner reveal piece? (the 1st picture you shared) Mine is 99 1/2" long. With it being this long, could they have cut it to fit like your 1st picture? Just trying to educate myself and understand how we got to this point.....Thank you for the help and advice.

Lisa,

The scribe molding should go only along the Fridge end panel and along the sides of the Appliance garage. I assume they cut the granite with a square and straight edge... If they did, the reveal along the edges should be 1/4" and the scribe molding should cover that.

The 92 1/2" span I believe you talking about the span along the back of tiled backsplash, this is where you have variation in height between the countertop and the tile which is anywhere between 1/4" - 1/2" right?

Scribe molding wouldn't look good there... but you can use metal tile edge strip something like in the picture below (this is just an example, they come with flat edges also and in variety of any color, etc)....you can match your range color or anything else in the kitchen and all your tile guy needs to do, is scribe the sheetrock a little or cut back the lip so the strip fits far enough... fill the gap with thinset and slide the strip in so it's embedded into the thinset. That will give you a beautiful straight edge against the tile and it will look like it belongs there.

Good luck

This is exactly why they want to install the 4" granite backsplash which looks horrible.

Could you have them add pencil molding all the way around between the granite and the tile? Since there's already a pencil molding in the backsplash it might look fine if you could find the same one.

Or, at least next to the cabinet in the very first picture you could add a piece of your granite that is the height of you tile backsplash along the cabinet to the notch of the cabinet. And, at the top of the granite were the gap is at your tile back splash you can add some matching trim of your tile along the edge...??? Your cabinets were done incorrectly. Any exposed sides of the cabinets should have either been "furniture sides" or a matching color "skin" that fills that are in should have been used. Don't let it worry you, it can be fixed....good luck...

I would suggest purchasing pencil molding (can be between 1/8" and 1/2" to fill in the height difference below your back splash. That isn't really something that they are at fault for as it is rare that a fabricator guarantees you can keep your back splash: there are so many things that can go wrong.

Looking closer at the pictures there is fault on both the cabinets and the fabricator. The cabinet face frame should not extend past the boxes without a finished end panel (if these are new cabinets it is possible that your cabinet shop still needs to trim out which would take care of the problem with gaps.)

But if the cabinets are existing or your cabinets are fully installed than the fabricator should have taken a more accurate template and routed the stone to fit around the cabinet. All fabricators here do a laser template which generates CAD plans and is sent to a CNC router- there is no cut or angle that they cannot do.

I had a similar problem: my cabinets were installed improperly and when the guys came to measure for the template, they told me as much. Guess what? They were right. I called the cabinet installers and had them come back, fix them, and then had countertops put in. It may not be the responsibility of the counter people to tell me, but I appreciated it. The alternative was to have a shoddy countertop installed next to shoddy cabinets. P.S. My electrician told me the same thing, that my cabinets were wrong the day before!

I do laser templates for a company and this is just laziness. I always measure from the back of the panel to the frame and make a 1/4 to 1/8 notch or whatever it is. Then I polish the existing overhang past the frame on the side.