The wait is over. Unfortunately, Stone Masters friend and client, Andrew, was beaten to the MasterChef title by an extremely skilled competitor.

We have all been extremely impressed with Andrew's cooking nonetheless - the style, the elegance and the finesse.

When we were doing Andrew's Ubatuba granite worktops for his home, he told me that he loved to cook, but I had no idea it was such a passion. I can't wait for the day when I get to eat in his very own restaurant!

Stone Masters was again very proud to have its worktops so prominently shown on the BBC 1 programme. At the beginning of this weeks episode, there were a few very meaningful shots of Andrew cooking in his home, and his kitchen looked great.

Andrew was kind enough to let us use his kitchen as a case study for well over a year now, long before his MasterChef fame. This case study has been on display on our home page all this time.

All the best for the future Andrew!

Look out for Stone Masters friend and client Andrew in this weeks final of MasterChef 2012. Andrew had a wonderfully complex performance on last weeks show where he made some outstanding desserts that were complimented by the guest judges as well as John and Gregg.

He is in the final with two other contestants and he has a real chance of winning the whole thing. Throughout the competition, it has been clear that he has the skill to become a top professional chef (with all the knowledge and experience that must accompany this). He has been asked by various judges to think more about the final composition of the plate and the balance of all his loud flavours, however he has made it clear that he is there to impress and that complexity is his route to do that.

Looking forward to seeing his performance on BBC1.

Andrew bought Ubatuba granite worktops from Stone Masters with demi bullnose edge.

Quartz Compac were well represented at the KBB exhibition in Birmingham yesterday and were presenting 5 new colours in their quartz worktop range:

Cool Gray

Dim Gray

Warm Gray

Smoke Gray

Dark Gray

Anybody notice a pattern here Gray?

Does anybody actually know if Gray should be spelt as Gray or Grey?  I have looked it up and apparently both are acceptable, but it confuses me somewhat!

The colours themselves look nice and keep with the earthy tones theme that seems to prevail these days amongst the top quartz surface companies.  However, one would think that in spring time, it would make better sense to launch brighter colours?

The stones are part of the "Trend" range that Compac have launched.  These will all be added to our website for sale as soon as we get some samples and confirmation that there is stock available.

Our story on Andrew's success in Masterchef continues - but this time with the bonus of his own kitchen being shown on the programme featuring the Ubatuba granite worktops we made for Andrew last year. Stone Masters on the BBC - all of us here are very proud.

As for Andrew's performance yesterday - steady as always with positive comments from both John and Gregg, but also measured praise from the guest food critics. Andrew is surely considered one of the favourites to win the competition now given that he is down to the last 4 contestants and has proved incredibly consistent.

We are all looking forward to next weeks episode where the contestants fly to Thailand to learn true Asian cooking.

Whenever you think of marble, the words that come to mind are luxurious, smooth and shiny, beautifully veined.

Consider granite worktops however, which have a very different characteristic - dotty almost where each mineral inside the granite is normally visible.

Then quartz worktops came along and changed the game altogether. Suddenly, plain colours were available, giving customers and designers the opportunity to concentrate on colour combinations involving the worktop as opposed to making the design of your whole room fit around the overpowering presence of a granite worktop.

The most obvious example of the plainness of quartz worktops is the perfectly white Silestone Blanco Zeus. Previously, the closest stones to pure white were Thassos or Sivec, both of which are marbles, thus suffering from being porous and prone to staining, thus giving it a limited lifespan in a kitchen.

There is now a wonderful compromise available or the beautiful marble look but with all the practicalities of a quartz worktop. Quartz Compac have released a series of stones which are practically indistinguishable from marble - stones like Carrara, Noce, Portoro. Even the names are same as famous marbles that you might expect in a five star hotel lobby.

Okite have always had their once unique Venati range of quartz surfaces. These include stones such as Arebescato Verde, or Azul Macaubas.

Silestone, have had for some time a veined type of range in their River series. These are stones such as Yukon, or Tigris Sand. The veining is considerably less prominent than the other brands of quartz worktop.

The point of this post was just to point out that the trend is certainly to go back to the beauty of old style veined marble. Look out for more such stones being released soon.