Countertops

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When we rehabbed our house, we chose Cambria (solely for color reasons) for the kitchen, and for the kids' bath, we chose Ceasarstone.

LOVE the stone- but it is less forgiving than the swirly granite colors in terms of showing dirt.
First, our kitchen countertop is chocolate brown- solid color.  If the stone is wet, it can dry and leave water spots.  I have to be vigilant about cleaning it up or else it will show.

Our kids' bathroom has a white Caesar Stone countertop.  It is awesome- and the water stains/dust don't show as much.

 
PM me that kitchen rehab place... I want to look at the options (one of the reasons I look going to model homes and open houses).
 
Zombies! (props to Coltrane)

It's been over a year and we still haven't done anything.

I think it's coming down to granite in the kitchen but it seems there is a new type of granite that is self sealed so that you don't have to annually seal it. Does anyone have any experience with it?

In addition, we want to re-do the master shower and countertops. For the shower, we're thinking some porcelain tile. We would hope to find some larger surface material to reduce groutlines and we were looking into "cultured marble". It's not really marble, but man-made material similar to formica/quartzite but less expensive. I think they use it in the laundry room counters for the New Home Collection.

Since we will probably be moving out of this place and either re-renting it or selling it, we don't want to put in too much money but something that is easy to maintain and looks nice... any recommendations?
 
irvinehomeowner said:
Zombies! (props to Coltrane)

It's been over a year and we still haven't done anything.

I think it's coming down to granite in the kitchen but it seems there is a new type of granite that is self sealed so that you don't have to annually seal it. Does anyone have any experience with it?

In addition, we want to re-do the master shower and countertops. For the shower, we're thinking some porcelain tile. We would hope to find some larger surface material to reduce groutlines and we were looking into "cultured marble". It's not really marble, but man-made material similar to formica/quartzite but less expensive. I think they use it in the laundry room counters for the New Home Collection.

Since we will probably be moving out of this place and either re-renting it or selling it, we don't want to put in too much money but something that is easy to maintain and looks nice... any recommendations?
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If you do go with granite that needs to be sealed, try this stuff.  It really works. 
http://www.amazon.com/StoneTech-BPSS12-32-BulletProof-Sealer-1-Quart/dp/B00065W8G8/ref=sr_1_1?s=hi&ie=UTF8&qid=1295901106&sr=1-1

As for the "cultured marble" for the shower walls, look into Piedrafina. http://www.pfsurfaces.com
It is a "recycled" marble.  I think they take left over chunks of marble, put it together with resin, then cut them into slabs.  Sonoma of 2010 collection was offering it, and we got it for all shower walls and bathroom counters.  It looks great and there are no grout lines.  It is made with natural stone, so you do have to seal it, which I used the product above from Amazon.  Once you seal it, the cleaning is very easy also. 
 
I remembered piedrafina... but is it expensive? I'm looking for something along the pricing of tile but with less grout maintenance and a better look.
 
irvinehomeowner said:
I remembered piedrafina... but is it expensive? I'm looking for something along the pricing of tile but with less grout maintenance and a better look.
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It cost me a little under $6K to upgrade 2 shower walls, secondary bathtub walls, master bathtub surrounds, all bathroom countertops and laundry countertop.  I bought Sonoma plan 3 so that may give you idea of how much surface area is involved.  The master bath shower and tub surround has a lot of surface to cover.  Also, the price is from the builder, so you can probably find it for less outside.  I didn't price the tile upgrade so I am not sure how much cheaper tile would have been.
 
Any updates IHO?

The previous owner of my house was a contractor, and he installed granite on all of the countertops. I like the look of them, but cleaning is a bit of a pain. My friends who have granite countertops as well told me that I can't use "regular" products like Clorox wipes to clean up spills; I would have to use granite-specific products. So, even if I have a tiny spill I still have to break out the spray bottle of the granite cleaner and wipe up the mess. I guess I shouldn't have bought that huge box of cleaning wipes at Costco over a year ago. ;)

Another thing about granite (that I've noticed) is if a stain is allowed to sit on the granite for a period of time, the stain will seep in. There's a stain on one of my bathroom countertops; it's from a soap dispenser that leaked and stained the bottom of the dispenser. I scrubbed and scrubbed at it one afternoon using various products and I still can't get it out. I don't know if the previous owner sealed all of the countertops (6 in all), but I'm guessing not. He also had renters in the property for a few months, and who knows what they did to the counters.

If I ever redo the countertops, I would go with either Silestone or CeasarStone. I don't know how accurate this is, but it may be of interest: http://www.caesarstoneus.com/catalog/comparison.cfm
 
OKKid-
Try baking soda!  I had water stains on my choc brown tops (cambria- same as cesearstone or silestone).  I think the water there must be very hard- lots of calcification.  Anyways, I put a baking soda paste around the area and it soaked up the waterstain.

 
OKkid said:
Any updates IHO?
Click to expand...
Not really... although we were at Home Depot a few weekends ago looking at the different products.

It's interesting you mention your granite woes as HD no longer sells granite but a pre-sealed granite, Stonemark, that has a 15-year warranty. Between that and MarbleStone (similar to Piedrafina), those seem to be the least expensive "upscale" looking materials.

What I liked about Marblestone is like I2I mentioned, they could put a solid slab on the walls in a shower which minimizes grout stains and based on the prices they quoted me, it's either less or just as much as ceramic/marble tile.

One of the other issues with replacing the kitchen countertops is what to do for the backsplash. I'm not really a fan of full granite backsplashes, or even a 6" backsplash and then a painted wall... right now ours is a fulll up to the cabinets square white tile backsplash so that will have to be demoed and replaced with something... and I prefer a more neutral look like either subway tiles or a travertine tile (the trav being too expensive).

Considering we are planning to turn this back into a rental if we ever find a house, it's a bit hard to justify spending the money when a tenant may not take care of it.
 
Parents are thinking about redoing their counter tops and getting granite.  What would be a good price for the work?  I know there are many grades of granite.  But if you break it down to cost per square foot, in what ballpark range should I be paying for labor?  I have seen some ads saying they can do $24.99 / sq. ft. installed, (labor and materials).  Is that a good price?
 
Necro time.

So I've been looking at these guys:
http://www.granitetransformations.com/

Just not sure about this "overlay" type of solution. I wouldn't do it for a house I plan to live in but considering we're going to convert our current house to a rental, this may be a way to decrease expenditure but keeping the asset looking nice.

Anyone use them?
 
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