Tell me about your countertop...

[finally]

Next big project in the house is the countertop.  I have very little space there so cost is a factor but not limiting since it's not a lot to replace.  I am not into cooking so high durability is not a huge factor for me.

Tell me about your countertop...the good, the bad & the ugly (or not so ugly)

[kaylie]

I have granite and I love it. We have one of the less porous varieties (Azul Aran) so we don't have to worry about keeping it sealed. It's got a decent amount of movement and it hides mess very well.

If you end up wanting granite, quartz, soapstone or marble you should check out StoneTech in Trenton: www.stonetechmarble.com/

We went to several places and their prices were the best. Very happy with our experience there.

[treedimensional]

Granite. I got black (uba tuba) so I would never have to worry about it staining, even if I "forget" to seal it (lazy, actually) 10 years down the road.
I clean it with a spray of Windex and a paper towel wipe down. Very easy.

[tripleshot]

We have quartz and love it much more than the granite in our old house.

[bunnymendelbaum]

This rental has a very patterned granite. I hate it. It hides dirt too well. We will clean it, but if you run your hand across it and it still feels dirty. You can't tell where to scrub. UGH.

Our house had black matte epoxy. I LOVED it. Warm to the touch and so easy to clean.

[cjeanette]

We have granite and while it isn't my style it has been really easy to keep clean and is durable.

[mrsd2006]

We went with granite. Love it so far (had it about one month). Had a Snow White Corian before - house came with it. Everything stained it but it would come clean with Clorox clean up spray

[kellikans]

we have carrara marble and I LOVE it. it is high maintenance, but if you don't cook a lot it shouldn't be an issue. ours is polished and we do have etch marks (from lemonade, dish soap, water marks), but you can only really see them in certain light if you are looking for them. we do seal it, so no stains. and there are some chips along the edges (from dishes getting banged onto the edge, DH dropped a glass spice jar), but I understood that all of this would happen before we committed and I'm fine with it. it just adds character to it IMO. plus, we live in an older home, so it fits. another pro was that it was insanely cheap. we paid $10/sqft for the slabs. even with the cons, I would seriously consider putting it in a kitchen in the future as well. nothing compares to the beauty of marble.

[finally]

Nov 16, 2014 22:14:14 GMT -5 bunnymendelbaum said:

This rental has a very patterned granite. I hate it. It hides dirt too well. We will clean it, but if you run your hand across it and it still feels dirty. You can't tell where to scrub. UGH.

Our house had black matte epoxy. I LOVED it. Warm to the touch and so easy to clean.

I had this in my last house and used to have to crouch down to eye level with the countertop to see where the crumbs and dust were so I could clean it.

[tripleshot]

Nov 16, 2014 21:37:12 GMT -5 @juno said:

Nov 16, 2014 21:31:04 GMT -5 tripleshot said:

We have quartz and love it much more than the granite in our old house.

Could you give more details? I've never had either and my dislike of granite is purely aesthetic (with a smidge of contrarian thrown in). Is quartz functionally better?

Here's an old post discussing quartz.
pandce.proboards.com/thread/372913

The granite we had in our old house was very porous even after we sealed it multiple times. There would be water rings and stains from cups and the soap bottles that only went away if they could air out. Then they would come right back if water sat on it. That made me concerned it wasn't sanitary and no matter how much I cleaned, was it really clean? Also, the texture of our granite was rough in spots.

The quartz is smooth and 100% non porous. I can still set hot pans on it like the granite. It can be a little more expensive but we found a local place that cuts samples for the national brand so they could sell it to us for cheaper than granite.

[lightbulbsun]

I have a solid surface counter made from recycled materials. I've had it for over 3 years and I love it. It's been through a lot (I frequently cut right on it), and still looks amazing. I got ECO when I bought it, but if I had to do it again I'd probably use Icestone, because they do all of their manufacturing in NY, which is relatively local to me. 

I don't have a better photo of the counters, but it has a bunch of small glass pieces throughout.

 

[countthestars]

We have quartz and I like it one million times more than I liked the quartz at our last house. It doesn't show water spots, is fairly neutral, and looks nice in my home. This is the one we have, or very similar to this:
www.cambriausa.com/en/Designs/design-palette/Tenby-Cream/

[dr.girlfriend]

I have granite, and I really love it. It isn't well-captured by pictures, but it's a beautiful light sand/cream mix, and it has sparkly bits of micah in it.  It's really beautiful. So far it's been maintenance-free. I really think it's all about picking your slab though -- other slabs of this same variety (Bianco Antico) I didn't like at all.



If you have a really small area, I would look for granite remnants or Habitat for Humanity's Restore or places like that that might be recycling already-cut granite.

[raangoli]

Like @beagle, we have formica counter tops. But ours is some random blue/grey shade. They're OK, but for the life of me, no mater how much I bleached or used vinegar/water on them, they still are sticky in some spots. In other spots they are rough/scratched. I have no idea what the previous owner did, but it's strange. And it hides crumbs well. They never really feel clean to me. It's my nightmare.

I cannot wait for the day that they are replaced.

[bunnies]

Caesartstone quartz. I've had it for over a year now. Zero maintenance so far. Love.

[jillybean222]

we have granite. i like it. we have lived in 4 houses together and only had formica before so granite seemed like a huge upgrade for both of us!! it looks nice. we have darker speckled granite and it is hard to see messes on it so i feel like i am always wiping it down to be sure it is clean. actually i might be wiping it down constantly bc i have 3 kids, who knows!

[Deleted]

We have New Venetian Gold in our new house. It reads more white than yellow/gold like some that are out there. Which is fine by me since I'm not a huge yellow/gold fan anyway but ours was the best option offered unless we wanted to pay some moola.

[floridakat]

I feel like our granite is always dirty. It's just so easy to miss spots and small spills in the pattern. If I had it to do over again, we would have upgraded to quartz when we built.

[bunch]

Nov 17, 2014 0:38:09 GMT -5 kellikans said:

we have carrara marble and I LOVE it. it is high maintenance, but if you don't cook a lot it shouldn't be an issue. ours is polished and we do have etch marks (from lemonade, dish soap, water marks), but you can only really see them in certain light if you are looking for them. we do seal it, so no stains. and there are some chips along the edges (from dishes getting banged onto the edge, DH dropped a glass spice jar), but I understood that all of this would happen before we committed and I'm fine with it. it just adds character to it IMO. plus, we live in an older home, so it fits. another pro was that it was insanely cheap. we paid $10/sqft for the slabs. even with the cons, I would seriously consider putting it in a kitchen in the future as well. nothing compares to the beauty of marble.

Wow, that's amazing.  When I was looking at carrara it was a fortune, much more than the granite that we chose.

I've done granite x2 and loved it.  I'm fortunate enough to live close to the "granite capital of the us" so I went and picked out my individual slabs both times and was able to get some cool looking stuff for not that much $$.

[bunch]

Nov 18, 2014 14:24:30 GMT -5 @juno said:

Nov 18, 2014 14:13:55 GMT -5 bunch said:

Wow, that's amazing.  When I was looking at carrara it was a fortune, much more than the granite that we chose.

I've done granite x2 and loved it.  I'm fortunate enough to live close to the "granite capital of the us" so I went and picked out my individual slabs both times and was able to get some cool looking stuff for not that much $$.

Our marble guy said the price of marble varies pretty widely depending on the day.  I don't know how much/sq ft. we paid for the slabs because I don't know how big the slabs were to begin with, but our slab was $550 I think, and it did the two counters we needed.  Kicking myself for not asking them to deliver whatever was leftover from the slabs.  I meant to because I'm pretty sure I could have come up with some uses for it.

That's crazy.  I'm pretty sure I was quoted around $75 a sq ft installed.  I mean I didn't have to pay for what I didn't use, but it wasn't enough waste for that price to be anywhere comparable. 

[bunch]

Nov 18, 2014 14:49:22 GMT -5 @juno said:

Nov 18, 2014 14:28:19 GMT -5 bunch said:

That's crazy.  I'm pretty sure I was quoted around $75 a sq ft installed.  I mean I didn't have to pay for what I didn't use, but it wasn't enough waste for that price to be anywhere comparable. 

Installation was extra for us, so it was around $1K total.  I don't think it was cheap by any means on a sq. ft. basis, so we paid a good bit more than $10/sf, so I'm surprised to hear it can go that low.  Worked out/sq. ft. on our 20 sf of counters, it's about $50/sq. ft. installed.  He said the slab alone could have been $1,000 on a different day, which would have been $75/sf installed.  I was just surprised by the variability.  I, perhaps stupidly, didn't shop around though.  This guy had offered to let me go through his remnants and have for free anything I found that I wanted; when I didn't find something, I just went with him because he'd been so nice.  Our fir board counters were about $30/sq. ft. installed, so definitely cheaper.

Gotcha.  Yeah, the whole business is questionable.  I would go look at the granite warehouses and then they'd call my guy so that he could tell me "his" price.   I think I may have gotten hosed on some of my projects as well.  

[Velar Fricative]

No idea - definitely not granite or quartz or anything like that. Our new house was/is stuck in 1992 so I'm betting it's formica of some sort. Thankfully I hate it less now that the kitchen cabinets are painted, so while not a counter I would recommend at all it's not a priority to replace anytime soon.

[msmerymac]

The granite in our rental was fine, although we got a few water stains on it. We used granite cleaner on it, but I don't think that's necessary. It truly did hold up to putting hot pots on it, though. The color was kind of pink and gray swirls, so not my favorite, but it was a leftover remnant from one of the landlord's friend's projects. However, I have issues with granite not being a renewable resource and being so popular that it's kind of overused for something that literally cannot be made again.

Right now we have... nothing. Well, we have tiny, shelf-like counters that are actually old-school laminate (the paper kind). My work space is a kitchen island/cabinet with butcher block. Because of the age of our house, I'm either going to go with butcher block or soapstone when we install new counter tops. It will fit into the 1920s elements of the rest of the house a bit more than granite and marble would be overkill for this property.

[gwynnetx]

We have Silestone in Stellar Snow.  Love. it.  All we have to do is wipe it down, and it's clean.  Plus, I love the color and the reflective bits, which looks awesome with the stainless appliance and stainless bits in our backsplash.

[TBM]

Nov 22, 2014 18:16:28 GMT -5 gwynnetx said:

We have Silestone in Stellar Snow.  Love. it.  All we have to do is wipe it down, and it's clean.  Plus, I love the color and the reflective bits, which looks awesome with the stainless appliance and stainless bits in our backsplash.

We have Cambria Whitney, (which is very similar to Stellar Snow), on our island.  It was DH's choice, and I wasn't sure about the sparkle, but it really is pretty and kind of adds something to the room.

It is also garners the most compliments and comments.  All of the contractors (male and mostly self proclaimed red neck) really like it.   It cracks me up when they brag about all of the 'manly' stuff they do and how much of that carries over into their homes, (hunting, hunting trophies, mainly outdoors related things), then they ooh and ahh over the sparkly counter. lol   I thought for sure that they would prefer the Caesarstone in Concrete that I chose for the perimeter, but they all gravitate to the white sparkly counter.

I prefer the Cambria over other quartz (including our Caesarstone) for a few reasons, but one thing that I really love that it is manufactured in the US.  The warranty is really good.  Also, all quartz counters have the same ingredients, but the percentage of quartz is not the same, and some definitely look/feel more plastic than others.

[315]

I have Caesarstone in Misty Carrera. I loooove it.