It's for the separation of clean-up activities from food preparation. Why would you want to rinse your lettuce or any other fresh food in a sink full of dirty pots? It's the result of zoning the kitchen into areas for specific tasks. Rinsing plates and pots, clean-up, the dishwasher, garbage, and recycling can go into one zone, with a sink for that purpose and preparation such as washing vegetables, peeling, chopping and compost collection can be in another area, with a sink for that purpose and the conflicts between the two are reduced.

I think the first layout is fine. You might want to consider moving the door for the storage room of the master bedroom so that it opens into the hall. That way the kids can use it for overflow storage. Also, that hallway is big enough that I think it could hold a large armour, providing more closet space. (There's no need to sleep in the same room as your clothes, so long as they're not too far off.) Also, don't forget that while the drawing shows kids in double beds, this need not be the case, so there will be more room for furniture (dressers or whatever) in their rooms. Finally, that step to bedroom 4 will not be odd at all. I've seen it in other homes. It looks clumsy in the drawing but it isn't. What you'll see when you come up the stairs is a bedroom door on a slight diagonal. It's only an odd jagged step if you walk like a robot, in straight lines along the wall, which is what your eye is doing on the drawing but you won't do in real life.

~$400 including expedited shipping. My GC just had his regular countertop guy do them, which wasn't great.... he had trouble making clean cuts. If I were going to do it again I would have pressed for someone with expertise to cut them. You can see in the image that the facing is not made of the stone peak, because too much was broken during the cutting to make the mitered edge. I'm a little bummed, but mostly pleased with the surface (which is the important part) thus far.

But is that the same composition as the current very smart looking black sinks? Responses from owners of current design sinks would be more relevant!