Counter Culture

Counter tops are expensive!  Almost as expensive as the rest of our entire kitchen put together including appliances.  Who knew?  We've redone 3 kitchens previously and in each of them we chose laminate counter tops.  I liked them.  They did their job and the cost was extremely reasonable.

Kitchen counter in our house at W. William St.

 

 

 

 

In our current house we have laminate for our counters along with a butcher block top for our island.

Current House

 I think the laminate has worked in these houses for two reasons. 
     1. The kitchen counter space is not a large amount of square footage.
     2. The price point of the houses did not call for a high end surface.
  I really like the mix of the butcher block and laminate in our current house.  The butcher block was bought on the cheap at Ikea.  I think we got a 40"x72" (20 Square feet) for around $130.00.  That doesn't include the cost to drive there, but I love Ikea, so the trip worth the gas money.  It ended up being around $6.50 per square foot.  Not bad once you look at the other options available out there.  Let me put that $6.50 in perspective.  Here is what we are going to pay for some other counter top options.
Laminate $23.00 a square foot installed + tax
Corian (Solid Surface) $ 59.00-89.00 a square foot installed (there were some cheaper options, but I didn't like them.)
Quartz $54.00 -89.00 a square foot installed
Granite $49.00-89.00 a square foot installed
  I learned a  couple of things during my research.  Granite, Corian (solid surface counter tops), and Quartz are not subject to sales tax (at least in New York State) because it is considered a capital improvement.  Laminate is subject to sales tax.   I also learned the pros and cons to these different materials.  I know many people who have each of these and are happy with their choices, so I am not going to bore you with my take on the benefits or drawbacks of any of these. Have your counter top and cook on it too! To be honest with you I really wanted concrete counter tops, but for several reasons we felt our money, energy, and time would be better spent on other projects.  Really we just didn't want to screw them up.
   We will have about 75 square feet of counter surface.  We quickly realized that any material we chose would be A LOT of money.  We considered doing the butcher block from IKEA, but since we are doing an extra deep peninsula to accommodate for seating we would have to seam it in the middle.  Neither one of us was thrilled with the amount of seams it would require.  We are planning on using the butcher block in our mudroom area since the space is smaller and won't require any seams.
  We then looked at laminate.  The cost by far was the best, but we didn't think that amount of laminate would add value to our kitchen.  We would rather pinch a few pennies in the flooring department for the bathrooms and put something a little nicer on our counters.
   After checking out Lowes and Home Depot we found that there were a few options in Granite that were cheaper than Corian and Quartz. I never would have thought that, but apparently Granite is so 2010 it's being put on the clearance rack.

This is Lowes most affordable option.

I liked the pattern of this granite, but I thought the black and white would make the kitchen look too sterile, but I was willing to settle to save $1,000.  Good thing Dan scoured Craig's List.  We found Granite Creations by Anthony.  He had some lovely pieces of stone starting at $40.00 a sq. ft.  We walked away with these 2 samples.

Yvara ($50.00 sq. ft)

Santa Cecelia $45.00 ( I have no idea if this is how it's really spelled.)

Being the discriminating consumers that we are we quickly decided to go with the cheapest option.  I don't think anyone is really surprised by this news.  It does help that we all preferred the Santa Cecelia.  It had a warm neutral tone to it, and I hope it will it better match the rest of the decor.

 I'm sorry if you wasted some of your very valuable time reading about our counter top decision making process. I will make it up to you with a good cup of coffee and my newly famous pumpkin cake.  Have any of you  made a counter top choice recently?  How did it all work out?  In other house related news, we should be getting electric service this week.  I can't wait for lights and heat!