OK, so here's how this small miracle happened. First, I bought a kitchen island. Then the kitchen island arrived and I didn't like it, and it also didn't function the way I needed it to (meaning as a sort of counter/bar), because I had neglected to notice that there was a piece of metal right there in the spot where a person's legs were theoretically supposed to go.

So I looked everywhere online, and everything I found was either not my style or too expensive or too clunky or too something, until I happened upon a Pinterest photo of an Urban Outfitters counter-height table with legs that looked like plumbing pipes. It was about $80, and exactly what I wanted. It was also not available anywhere on the Internet at all, except for via one Etsy vendor who was pretending that it was vintage (it is not) and selling it for around $400. Nope.

Then I looked at the picture of the table more closely, and realized that the legs that "looked like plumbing pipes" were actually...plumbing pipes. Like, the kind that you can get at a hardware store. I started thinking that I might like to try making something like that myself, but couldn't figure out what to do for a tabletop...until I remembered that several months ago my friend Alisa had offered me a gorgeous quartz remnant - white, with sparkles - that I'd declined because I had no idea what I would do with it.