Buying new countertops
Going through the many types of replacement counter tops shouldn’t make your tear your hair out, but you’re going to want to make sure you know about all of your choices. Here’s some of your options.
“Formica” has to be the market leader out there. A thin layer of sandwiched plastic/paper that’s been squashed under tremendous pressure, and then bonded to a structure of substrate. You may have grown up with one. They’re relatively durable, affordable, come in almost any color and they work!
Corian type really started making huge inroads a decade ago, and is something to keep in mind. A multitude of factories produce sheets, you’ll have plenty to choose from. It’s a large step up from laminate, and the one piece sink is a dominant benefit to many consumers.
Engineered stone/quartz: There’s a growing number of companies that will create a pseudo stone for you. The physical plant to manufacture the engineered stone is usually licensed to one company per country. You can get slabs from Italy, Spain, China, Korean, Israel, USA, and Canada quite readily. It usually prices out like a level 3 or level 4 natural stone, but you can have hundreds of color choices within the same cost. Most granite fabricators will be happy to manufacture the color of your choice.
Natural stone: Usually referred to as “Granite Countertops”. The polished slabs are currently imported in mass from Italy, India, China, Brazil, Canada, & and a few varieties from the USA. There are thousands of varieties available, and each block or batch can be as different as night and day. With careful planning, one can make appointments to visit several locations to find the perfect mix of colors, depth, swirling, graining, texture, and randomness that can has yet to be matched by solid surface, laminate, or engineered stone.
Some consumers can select the type of granite quickly, others may take weeks. It’s common to come upon that you’ve have several likely contenders, and making the final selection can get serious. Picking the stone cutter is actually more important than picking the granite. You’d have to go out of your way to pick a “bad” granite, but thousands of homeowners have picked a “bad” fabricator. Ask the fabricator how long they’ve been in business. Have them describe why their tooling provides the best fit and finish. What are the names and experiences of the templater, sawyer, polisher, installers? Do they have samples of their work in a showroom to look at. Many of the top fabricators belong to industry trade groups like the Marble Institute of America (MIA), or to the Stone Fabricators Alliance (SFA). Many small shops like Granite Chicago or larger ones like Granite PA turn out super work because of the experiences and knowledge that are shared within these organized artisan groups.
Selecting a replacement worktop can be enjoyable and if what you have now isn’t what is used to be, we hope to see you in someones showroom!
This entry was posted on Monday, September 27th, 2010 at 6:02 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.