Kitchen Counter Conundrum
Gena Smith
5 years ago
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Comments (25)
Anglophilia
5 years agomjlb
5 years agoRelated Discussions
Slate Counter-top Conundrum
Comments (2)That's normal. I have a 40 year old slate entry way, and it's covered in a fine patina of nicks, dings, and gouges. I wouldn't ever call it a hard stone. Hard compared to wood, yes. It's about like soapstone. Some cuts are harder, some softer. Not anywhere as hard as granite....See MoreCountertop conundrum
Comments (46)Aloha! The kitchen is mostly done and at the end of the day we ended up with Glacier White Granite! When I went to reserved my stone, all of the pieces of the honed arabescato that I liked where gone. I wasn't inclined to spend all that extra money and settle for one that had large dark spots all over it. I also wasn't thrilled with the selection of polished, for the same price. Then I found a slab of polished Super White at another stone yard that I loved and was so proud of myself for picking a stone that was a $1500 savings over the arabescato. Then the fabricator called me to let me know that the slab wasn't big enough for the whole kitchen, so I would have to pay another $1000 to finish the last 15" piece of counter. That was my final sign. I gave up on the marble and started all over. I found a slab of Glacier White that I loved, and it turns out that it was snatched up 3 days earlier. Feeling burned out, I finally found a slab of Glacier White that I didn't hate and that became our counters. At the end of the day I went from wanting my first love to settling for something I didn't hate. Sigh. The final sting was that the fabricator didn't tell me when he was templeting (I thought he was going to let me know, because he said that I could come down and help decide), so the parts that I didn't like ended up being the most prominent. Unfortunately, that has been how our entire remodel has been. Even our contractor has been shocked at how many issues we've had. I have definitely been schooled by my kitchen. :-) (The worst was having to rent a concrete grinder and personally grind down a hump in my floor that the self leveler didn't fix. Worst mess to clean up EVER!!! I actually cried that night.) Now, having said all of that, and having reached a temporary stopping point (still need to tile and deal with some minor issues), I've finally had some time to stop being mad at my kitchen and really enjoy it. And guess what - I really like my counters! I love that I don't have to worry about my husband leaving wet raspberries and other gooey things on my counters (because, yes, he still does). And, yes, they do end up having things stacked all over them all the time, so they are not a glowing and pristine focal point. They are my work horse counters. I love my deep undermount sink that these counters allow me to have. We stayed pretty close to budget. I would say that, after tiling, we'll have spent about $16K, but with that low budget came A LOT of extra work and frustration. All of our cabinets came from Ikea. We used 18" fan cabinets and stacked them to achieve our 36" uppers and then ordered Scherr's custom doors to go over them (Scherr's was fantastic to deal with). I do not, however, recommend the stacking method. It made it so hard to plumb and level with our fantastically out of square ( and sloping walls) u shaped kitchen. One thing I can't recommend enough is edgebanding our Ikea cabinets with Fast Edge wood. We painted the edges of the Gnosjo cabinets dark, so you don't see the white through the doors. Even where the white doors go. Once we trimmed out the cabinets, I used wood putty, then primed and painted the trim and cabinet edges and everything looks so cohesive. Also love our new LED pot lights! I have so much extra light in the kitchen and I love it. We did lose some natural light taking out an east facing window (that faced the neighbors window about 8 feet away,so we never pulled up the blinds), but we also gained a lot more cabinet space. Living in the gray NW, I don't get much natural light most of the year anyway, so I find that having the extra electrical light is a lot more helpful. Some things that I'm mixed on... The Ikea Gnosjo cabinets are crazy finger printy!! Someday I will find the time to clean them properly again, but they are very streaky in the meantime. My dark gray Marmoleum floors feel fantastic on my feet, but they show ever single crumb known to man. They were also very tricky for us to install. I won't go into details, but let's just say that every demonstration on the web showed them being installed in an empty square room. It was also really hard to get info online about the click together tiles (what kind of underlayment?) and the instructions were obviously translated from another language and didn't always make sense. The prior kitchen looked decent from a distance, but it was falling apart and quite dysfunctional. I love the functionality of my new kitchen and the ikea cabinets (with lots of drawers!) are fantastic. I love my sink and I love that my floors don't have missing chunks and holes all over. I do miss the over the stove microwave (now we have one in the pantry), but our gas stove was just too hot for one and our third microwave was failing. Now we have a hood that is actually vented outside. All in all the kitchen is a huge improvement. It could use a little color, so I've been tracking down some aqua accessories. We are planning to do white subway tile with light gray grout for all wall surfaces within the next few months. Sorry for writing a book to your small question! :-) DJ...See MoreCounter-top Advice for old outdated farm kitchen
Comments (4)You need to do some homework. Every material has it's pros and cons, and it all comes down to what you are willing to live with. "Best" is completely subjective. Frankly, if my DH had not felt so strongly about our using a "higher end" counter top (we ended up with engineered quartz) I would have done a laminate. They are durable, warm, soft, and very inexpensive. Completely low-maintenance if you are not careless about using them. Our quartz will be fine, and looks fantastic, but we spent nearly three times what we could have spent on a high-end laminate. IKEA has some DIY laminate for incredibly little cost if you are willing to put in the effort and will buy you plenty of time to do some research on your countertop options. Here is a link that might be useful: IKEA wood and laminate countertops...See MoreWhite Kitchen Counter top dilemma
Comments (22)"I’d love to do a bold pattern, but I haven’t found one that doesn’t look dated."-well what can I say..lucky you))) ('cause I've found so many-but would leave me broke lol. Still obsessively think about some. depends on a house of course..I'm lucky to have a house that beg for tiles. And I myself am a tile person. And a pattern person. So we met each other. Me and the house. We met each other-and then compromised...)) Please share your progress as you go, if you feel like it..we'd love to see how it all comes together!...See Moretfitz1006
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