I saw that site and just never saw the ones I wanted when I looked. I think it is a great concept. The fact that people use 2 counter materials in their kitchen all the time these days, will give you a great chance to either pick 2 to make your total if there is not enough of one, or to give you a chance at more than one extra piece from other people's kitchens. Since you are not looking at natural stone, there should be way less variation between slabs and esp if they are from the same era. If you try to match a 5 year old counter with the same name color, you could see a difference, but yours will be bought the same year.

Good luck and please post how you make out ;)

The fabrication from a professional for those slabs you buy will be around 2K for a two slab kitchen. That's if you go with a professional. If you attempt to DIY, you can spend another $400-600 on tools and materials to shape and glue the counters together. Solid surface has to have an edge buildup all the way around as it's 3/4". You can work it with some good woodworking tools----IF you have enough experience. It's not for a novice DIYer. And you won't be able to have an integrated sink unless you go with a professional to fabricate, which is one of the main reasons that folks choose solid surface over granite.

We have installed granite starting at $41 a square foot for 5 colors, (Giallo Fantasia and Uba Tuba are the most popular $41 colors) and the Samsung Staron series of solid surface has a lot of nice colors for under $50 installed. Average kitchens done in those are around $2500-$3000 with a basic edge. If you live further than 30 miles from your local HD, there will be a one way milage charge of $1 per mile. FInd your local HD and do an in person assessment of the colors. HD also has a countertop calculator online on their website under "Kitchens" that will let you pick different options and see how that affects the bottom line.

I should mention that we got our Corian (Rain Cloud) when it was on sale at IKEA for 40% off if you buy $2,500 or more in the kitchen dept. They came out to approx $40 a sqft, installed. Our cabs, counters and full installation of both came in under $10k in a fairly large kitchen. We have over 28 linear feet of cabs and counters, not counting the cabs over our fridge/freezer set, lol.

Thanks for the info Hollysprings and Dianalo. Your experience and knowledge is very helpful. I didn't realize it would be that expensive to install. That pretty well puts us right back where we started. Oh well. That's why I asked.

I don't want an integrated sink. DH just wants a solid surface of some kind, i.e. not laminate, and I am trying to accommodate his requests within our budget.

I really hadn't thought about Lowes and HD for countertops. We have a Lowe's about 20 miles from us and HD about 40 miles from us. However, I just don't see stone or solid surface counters in our budget right now, unless we get an amazing deal like the one Dianalo found, which is why I was so shocked and relieved when DH suggested that we may want to live with temporary plywood counters until we could afford what we really wanted. What a nice surprise!