We’re planning on making some kitchen improvements. I replaced appliances earlier this year, now moving on to floor tile and kitchen counters. The kitchen counters have the potential to be the biggest cost. I have looked at everything from real granite, quartz resin (Called Zodiaq at Lowes) and Corian (some kind of solid plastic). I like various aspects of each and have seen styles I like in each. All are in my budget.
Just wondering if anybody has traversed this area recently and have any feedback on factors that affected their decision?
Hey Wahoo, We did the whole flippin kitchen in the last year. While not the biggest expense, the counters were definately up there. We started with a smallish kitchen with standard counters. I redid the counters about 2 - 3 years ago with a material similar to corian. ( I got it for almost nothing). I was just putting off the inevitable.
We fiinally decided to do cabinets...countertops, the whole thing. And since we were doing all that, I had a wall taken out to double the size of the kitchen. there are a couple things that went into my final decision. First was cost. I am a cheap SOB. damned cheap. We had custom cabinets made.....two reasons. First is quality. I hate spending money and I really hate spending money on junk. Custom actually came out to be less......at least to start. Since we had custom and could do whatever we wanted we did whatever we wanted. and it added a bit of cost but still not as much as the “semi custom”. instead of a 6 by 3 island I did an 8 by 5 grand piano shaped thing. it was a case of hitting the break point.
We looked at Corian Silestone(quartz composite) and granite. Lots of counter space. the island top, two long wall counters and a concealed counter inside a pantry cabinet. I had my wife talked into doingn one of the long wall counters either in laminate or wood. The other was either gonna be quartz or granite. we went with Granite and I’m glad we did. ?Now I’m sure you have noticed that you can spend every frickin dime you will ever make on granite but we found that within a few dollars a square foot of the composite we had a lot of different styles available to us. Again back to breakpoint. When you hit a certain point of spending you might as well go ahead and get what youwant. The quality will be remembered long after the money is forgotten. The island is Green Maritaka and the wall runs are incas gold ( I think) I did both of them as a surprise for my wife and the concealed run was just laminate. no point gold plating the sewer pipes.
At the point we did the countertops, I was getting low on cash and pretty grumpy about the budget, but it’s done and we recovered. And it’s nice. really nice. it changed the dynamic of the house quite a bit. I still freak about putting hot pans diirectly on it but my wife was assured that she could so she does it with abandon.
Our marble fabricator is in Powhattan.
I did a bit of research into this area and around here anyway, it seemed to me that arborite (laminate?) was the best bang for the buck. I have friends who have both granite and corian and I’ve heard that there are some care issues with each. My thinking is that arborite is cheap, durable and doesn’t require some of the special maintenance/care that some of the high end counter tops do.
I did a bit of research into this area and around here anyway, it seemed to me that arborite (laminate?) was the best bang for the buck. I have friends who have both granite and corian and I’ve heard that there are some care issues with each. My thinking is that arborite is cheap, durable and doesn’t require some of the special maintenance/care that some of the high end counter tops do.
quartz countertops are better than granite. Granite must be sealed and has other requirements but not so with quartz.
I did a bit of research into this area and around here anyway, it seemed to me that arborite (laminate?) was the best bang for the buck. I have friends who have both granite and corian and I’ve heard that there are some care issues with each. My thinking is that arborite is cheap, durable and doesn’t require some of the special maintenance/care that some of the high end counter tops do.
quartz countertops are better than granite. Granite must be sealed and has other requirements but not so with quartz.
We installed Silestone a year (2? I forget) ago. The wife picked it, I’m perfectly happy with laminate. It’s decent enough, seems fairly indestructible. Can’t say I’m crazy about the color texture, but then I have no real sense of aesthetics anyway.
We are planning a kitchen remodel and going through the same issues. I was surprised to learn that you can now get granite countertops that have a “lifetime seal” on them. In reality, I wonder if this means you have to seal much less often. Kind of like platinum sparkplugs - maybe you could get 100K miles out of them, but in reality, we all change them out before then.
I don’t mean to dilute this thread, but how much did the others who mentioned recent kitchen remodels spend on cabinets? I was blown away by the cost was we obtained estimates. I’m not looking at custom - just Kraftmaid or Thomasville - stuff available at HD/Lowes.
Here’s a comparison between granite and engineered quartz. They say sealing, while required for granite, is not a major consideration (my guess is unless you’re the one having to seal it...LOL).
I think the term “quartz” is misleading...real quartz is somewhat transparant...."quartz" countertops are really bits of quartz and other stones held together by plastic binders........
We were given some liquid to apply on the counters . it is easy ...just clean the counters, and rub it on and buff it. nothing fancy. Done it once I think. Counters look great. not a real issue of care.
As for the cabinets. Kraftmade and Kitchencraft were 2 of the brands we looked at. and every other brand you can imagine. my wife had gotten hold of a catalog that had everthing they make. We asked about specific items and had people tell us we couldn’t get them. had 5 solid quotes . the same product would cost different amounts from different people. The quartz composite counter top was almost 10 bucks a sf more from HD than from the marble people. We had a basic idea of what we wanted and I had sketched out some things with Google sketch. We had looked at every showroom in our city. everything from the borg displays to the absolute ridiculous high end and the home show expo. my wife spent 6 months with a folder collecting ideas and looking at things We basicly wanted 30 linear feet of cabinets, top and bottom and an island. the quotes came in all over the map. Just for kicks I contacted a custom builder to see what kind of things he could do. quotes fr om semi custom people came in everywhere from 21-34 K. None of them actually gave us what we wanted. They all said the word “can’t” to me. When you are taking my money and saying that word I don’t like you.
We were interested in Cherry.
Custom quote came in at just under 15K with no countertops. Cherry was 8 % increase. Builder showed us Sapelle and Cherry. My wife chose Sapelle. Which was cheaper. Since he had the ability to do exactly anything that we wanted, we got a littler more particular. My wife saw an enclosesd pantry in a magazine. He charged a premium for it but builit it to sit over an HVAC reroute I had done and under a support beam. And it looks like it belongs. in the end we tacked another 10 k to the figure. Again countertops were not included. But we spent the “average” quote we got from the commercial cabinet places got a custom job with more options and twice the island area. I even looked into premanuvacuted self assemble cabinets but would have spent 10 grand just on the materials and it wouldn’t have been exactly what we wanted.
The kitchen probly doesn’t belong in this house but we don’t plan to move anytime soon so we got what we wanted.
By the way I drive a 12 year old car. Wife drives a 10 year old car. Daughter drives 12 year old car. the kitchen didn’t cost much more than getting myself a nice new ride.
I can replace the laminate/post form counter-tops in my house 3-4 time at least before I approach the cost of solid surface.
Also bucher block is a nice alternative.
I guess we’re not that far off base. We have two quotes so far. One, from a kitchen place, came in at $17k. Home Depot, with Kraftmaid cabinets, came in at $16k, but did not include the 10% to 16% increase for the upgraded finish. Neither quote includes counter tops, just cabinets. We have a lot of cabinets and my wife wants a few of the pull-out drawers, etc - but still, I was hoping to spend around $10k. We found it took weeks to get a quote. Wife drew out kitchen design to scale and gave them a list in tabular form of the cabinets she wanted. Pretty simple. Still took weeks to get a quote. I imagine we’ll get a few more before all is said and done.
Regarding countertops - it seems that the solid surface stuff goes on sale every few months, but you have to like the 10 or 12 colors that they put on sale. Also, for butcher block check out grizzly.com - you can buy workbench tops that are finished with the same food-safe finish that the kitchen place sells you, but for much less.
Still the project must go on - we are committed now. We have a split level built in 1970 that has original cabinets - they are falling apart. We’re going to bang out the wall dividing kitchen (which is quite small) and the living room and make one big kitchen/great room area. I bought a Napolean 1150P to park right in the middle, so we need to get this done so I get this stove burning!!!!
Tim, make sure it’s not a load bearing wall . you will need to make consideration for it if so. We did drawers for most of the base cabinets. Our builder also surprised us and did blumotion drawers for all the drawerrs. We had paid for 3 sets and he gave us 15.
Wahoowad. They are having the Carry street kitchen tour here in richmond soon. I might take it just to see. I am sure there will be some rather high end kitchens there.
