If that's the case, then yes you CAN tile right over it, although it's recommended that you start fresh. The reason being then you don't have to worry about the laminate parting, or "delaminating" from the base underneath. However, if you want to go over what you have, scuff it up good with a sander, and then use some thing like Laticrete's 317 thinset mixed with their 333 liquid latex, or Mapei's Kerabond thinset mixed with their Keralastic additive. You want something strong that's not going to lose its bond, and those are about the two strongest thinsets I know of.

Thank you everyone, you are all the best! I Love Love them so much, every time I see the stone I get so excited. My husband thinks its so funny as he thinks its nice to but can't believe how truly excited I am, lol. He's like "It's just rock, I don't see it the way you do!" :) He just grins and shakes his head. Some just dont understand us kitchen obsessed, he he. Firsthouse, thank you for all your wonderful compliments. I am so ready to move in as its been a very long and extremely slow build, we are not in till the end of next month but things are all scheduled to move quickly now. Hardwood is being installed tomorrow, yay!!! Hi Lynn, The edge is I believe a regular ogee edge on the island, the fabricators just used numbers for their edge selections, it was #250. The perimeter edge is an eased edge. I read some where maybe on GW that sometimes if you do a fancier edge on the island, most people won't notice it's not done on all the counters in the kitchen. I also like the simpleness of it on the perimeters. Romy, Yes, we have backsplash! I thought long and hard and changed my mind so so many times. Backsplashes are the hardest thing to choose, aren't they? Lol In the end, we just went with simple. My husband the last time at the tile place just pointed to the tile and said he liked it, I was like "Really!?!?!" It was the first tile I considered months and months ago. I looked back at all my inspiration pics on Houzz and then noticed 90% had that same tile in them. White 3x6 beveled subway. I'm going to go in the next couple of days again to see the hardwood and by then the backsplash will be grouted, I'll take more pics. :)

I would advise you avoid doing business with AZ tile and Dean Jessup specifically. We had a horrible experience with them. Don't expect them to act with integrity or stand behind their product. We used a fabricator that was a personal referral from him. When we had discoloration and fingerprints that wouldn't come off of our Della Terra quartz he informed me I must have "scarred" it by cleaning with a paper towel. ( I called him within an hour of the fabricator leaving). We paid beyond stone to buff it with a cleaner at their recommendation. It mostly resolved the issue although as a result of the buffing the gloss and sheen no longer match our perimeter counters. Best we can figure out the fabricator applied turtle wax or something similar to disguise striations around the sink cutout. Which is why fingerprints couldn't be cleaned off. We still have some smudges. Bottom line rather than try to help us resolve the issue he was hostile and accusatory. He said the fabricator (a friend of his apparently) said it was fine so we must have done something. Do business with them at your own risk.

Off topic perhaps but I thought I'd add...same concept applies to passive solar installations. There needs to be thermal mass--often rock, concrete, or water barrels. They inhale warmth during sunny part of day and exhale warmth later. The swing from hot to cool is very dramatic. We have a "solar porch" along one wall of our house. The floor is poured gypcrete (concrete product used in hotels, apartments, etc for dense floor) with dark-colored tile above that. During sunny winter days we open curtains and let sun heat be absorbed by the floor. The floor is a heat sink. It warms up. By mid-afternoon it might be downright barefootworthy in February. Before sundown we need to close the curtains. Late afternoon and into the evening, this floor slowly cools, releasing the heat into the porch and adjacent space which is at that time cooler than the floor. Once the air temp is cool enough, the thermostat kicks in the primary heating system. This might be well into the evening, depending on the weather outside. All night long, the temp of the porch floor continues to descend to the temp of the room air--say 62 degrees--and in morning the porch floor is definitely not barefootworthy. I don't like being in that room during winter if the floor has not been warmed by the passive solar gain. On cloudy winter days I go elsewhere and the curtains are left closed. The cold floor fights me for first dibs at the warmth being sent into it through the heat registers and the floor wins. Or I get a blanket for my lap and my warm socks and a rug for my feet. We have a wood stove in the same general part of the house. If that gets to be too hot for comfort, we open doors to the porch so the mass in porch floor grabs that heat and the adjacent room cools down. We have ductwork throughout the house so we can run the furnace fan to spread out the heat. We also have two ceiling fans which help spread out the porch heat. It's never ideal, but we've had the passive solar porch since we built it with incentives from fed gov't under Carter and it's made the house less expensive to heat and the porch allowed us to have wonderful views from windows that would not have been permitted by code without the thermal curtain. ___ I'd be happier if the heating of a rock countertop were also doing something more useful: warming the room as well, cooking a crockpot-like meal, or the like. Otherwise it's another stupid American waste of hydrocarbons.