Marble Tops

On Saturday we grabbed some coffee and headed to the Common Market antique store located in downtown Memphis. As the fairly new owners of a victorian house, our goal is to restore it as accurately as possible, so we love going antiquing. As we were walking into the store, my husband (who had been there before) warned me of two things: to take my jacket, and prepare to be overwhelmed.

And he was completely right. It's a huge old warehouse (not heated!), full of everything (and I mean everything) you could ever imagine from old antique homes. I'm not talking about antique furniture, although there was some of that there. I'm talking whole fireplace mantels. Exterior dentalwork. Columns. Transom windows. There was even a victorian staircase you could buy (for only $10,000). In the basement there were hundreds of old pocket/sliding and front doors, countless claw foot tubs, and old commodes (I was racking my brain for who would want to buy those, but who knows?). Not to mention the hundreds of bins of antique doorknob sets (we found a set that matches our house's knobs - they go for $150 per door!), door hinges, plumbing fixture handles...you could spend weeks in there and not see everything.

I should have taken more pictures, but honestly I was so cold that my hands wouldn't stop shaking. But I did snap the above pictures of two (two!) hand-carved marble vanity tops that we're seriously considering buying. We have grand plans to redo our master bathroom, and how pretty these would be! We would have matching but separate sinks! And isn't that every married couple's dream?

But look at that crack! Obviously it's been repaired, but now the crack sealer has yellowed. Does anyone have an ideas about lightening that up? Is that possible? If I could figure out a way to lighten up that crack to be closer to the grey veining, I'd buy them in a heartbeat. So, help! Any ideas?