Who cares if your GC has a fit? You are the ones that have to pay the bill, and if you might be uncomfortable spending extra on the bathroom vanity, don't do it. We're putting Silestone in the kitchen(of course the colour I picked would have to be the high end price-ugh), but will be putting laminate in the bathrooms for now(and probably for a good while to come).

I was vanity shopping yesterday.

A local building supply had granite and marble for about half the Lowe's price, the brand they carried was 'Marabella' or something similar.

For vanities that touch the wall on each end, you can pretty easily cut down a larger top to fit-- the rough edges won't show.

If you really want undermount sinks, it's tough with any material but slab stone. But if you don't mind an overmount sink, stone tile, mosaic tile, porcelain tile are all good choices. The porcelain is especially nice since you can get it in wide pieces that eliminate a lot of grout lines.

We have cultured marble in white on white (ie no swirls or anything). It fit my budget (About half of corian in my area) and I also wanted an integrated sink since as it is easier to clean and no seams like even an undermount. I've had it in previous houses and it always have held up great even to spilling nail polish remover.

Have you looked for granite in the scrap areas of large granite places?? You can usually get a darn good price on scrap granite. It's just taking up space and they are happy to sell it for lots less than you might expect.

check out ecounters.com. We got two silestone vanity tops from there for secondary bathrooms. One came cracked, and ecounters paid for return shipping and replaced it. I like laminate too, so I would not hesitate to use laminate either--there are lots of awesome looking laminate counters. Good luck.

Culltured marble has held up well at our vacation rental condo for years. We just replaced a tile tub surrround with cultured marble that looks like...marble! A guest commented in our guest book that our baths were like those at the Four Seasons (Hah!).

Chisue, do you have any pix you can share of these Four Seasons look alikes?? I plan to do cultured marble in my baths too, I think.

Originally I drooled over Carrera marble for the master bath. We have a 7ft top w/ 2 sinks. The quote for carrara was $1500 + sinks. Sigh. Cultured marble, w/ integrated sinks came to $400. We went with all white cultured marble. We've been in the new house for a week now and so far I have no complaints. It looks very nice, the upkeep is painless. Can't beat the price.

scwren,

You may be A LITTLE busy now having just moved in...but I'd love to see pictures of your vanity as soon as you have time!

I agree with ccoombs1. We've been using remnants at a local installer's shop for years now. A typical vanity top, with undermount sink, can be $300-$400.

The reason I said, "Hah!" is that I don't see what the guest saw; they're nice, but not Four Seasons in my book! I don't know how to post photos, but you could go to VRBO.com #8090. There are a couple bath photos on and I could answer your 'inquiry' with more pix.

I put cultured marble countertops on the vanities in the downstairs bath and the guest bath, and I think its a great budget option. Since the sink is usually formed as a part of the countertop, the cultured marble counter with sink is often cheaper than just the sink that you'd have to install in a formica counter.

For one bathroom I was able to use a standard size, since there was only a wall at one end. For the other one a since there were walls at each end, I could either get a custom-sized counter (which would have put me right back into the granite ball-park price) or get the next larger standard sized one and cut it down on site.

For a powderroom I'm working on, I built a small wall-mount vanity out of leftover Ipe deck boards and sanded and finished it, making a it a real budget friendly vanity.

I'd much rather post pics then unpack another box!

Here you go....notice - we GC'd our own house and still have some unfinished bits. I'm still trying to choose mirrors, towel racks etc

For the record - we priced out remnant granite for the bathrooms and it was still about $30-$40 sq ft. We couldn't beat cultured marble prices.

scwren...your cabinets are stunning and I do like the white on white cultured marble. Thanks so much for your picture!

fairytalebaby - that is exactly the cultured marble we have too, just different sink as I wanted splash rim as DH is good at getting water everywhere. Here is a pic of ours in the 2nd bath.

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Wow, these cultured marble countertops are beautiful! I had absolutely crossed them out b/c thought they'd look cheap and cheesy. Now they're the front runner!

We have tile countertops throughout our house (well, we're currently re-doing the master bath and are putting in a slab), and we hate them, especially in the bathrooms. Keeping the grout clean is a real chore, and we have a number of cracked tiles (though keep in mind that the house is 20 years old and I think the countertops are original). So I personally would vote strongly in favor of anything *other* than tile. If you do choose to use tile, I think oruboris's suggestion of getting large tiles to minimize grout lines is good.

BTW, thanks for posting that, scwren. Your colors are pretty similar to what we're doing in our new master bath, and it's really nice to see an example of it in finished form :-)

Home Depot and Expo Design center have prefab granite and marble countertops in standard vanity sizes for $200-$300 from Pegasus, including a premounted undermount sink. There are about 6 color choices. They are a great deal compared to a custom granite top. I think they have them to fit 30, 36, 48, and 60" vanities.

Dear FairyTaleBaby,

I think what you want is a Granite Counter top look at a cheaper price. I do not know of such a solution but I have something which I think comes close-ish and is a "standard" architect trick.

Step 1) Do not use solid granite, instead use granite tiles 12" x 12". This saves significantly on the cost.

Step 2) The difficulty with this is the edging. The standard fix here is to use a nice piece of wood, mahogany of what ever you like. This is cheap because you only need a 1"x1" by say 20 feet. Ask yor carpenter to cut an edging shape of your choice, rounded, 1/4 rounded etc.

Make sure you seal up the granite tile joints nicely, and use a colored grout of your choice. I would try and match the granite tiles as closely as possible.

Hope this helps.

Best, Mike.

Thanks for all the suggestions...we are going ahead with the white cultured marble. It just seems easy and inexpensive which is exactly what we need at this point in the build! Thanks again!

Here's our half bath with cultured marble that is "mushroom" color with a brown swirl. I love it!