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The dirty little secret about countertops

January 13, 2011

It’s probably a sign of the times that I’ve been flummoxed by a countertop for the bathroom vanity.

We live in a time when you can get almost anything you want, and usually pretty quickly. So perhaps I was being presumptuous when I assumed that the way one went about getting a counter for a vanity (I assumed since I’ve never purchased a counter for anything before) was to pick out what you like, have them come measure, pay them and ooh and ahh over your new counter.

Craftsman Green Renovation contemporary bathroom
I just wanted a bathroom that felt like this one from Houzz.com.

Apparently this is not how it works.

Before I get into it all, let me tell you how my mom designed one of the bathrooms in their house when they built it in the 1960s. The tile guy came one day and said “Do you want yellow tile or blue tile?” She said yellow and has been designing around 4-inch yellow tile ever since.

I guess I thought those days were over, but maybe not so much. Here’s how the countertop issue has played out:

When I was in the throes of making decisions for this renovation, I started planning the bathroom with a sink. And then I worked on the counter, and believe it or not, the rest came from there.

I went to a local stone countertop place, looked at samples, and got a quote on Caesarstone quartz for our smallish vanity (I need about eight square feet of countertop). I specifically asked if the size of the vanity was a problem and was told, “Nope, you just pick what you like and you pay for what you use. If we have a remnant we’ll use that, but if not we’ll order what we need.” Any maybe answers like that are why that salesperson was no longer there when I went back two months later to refine my decision.

Photobucket
Caesarstone Organic White: I love the “blobs” in this quartz. I’ve been told they are “particulates” but I prefer blobs. This is what I fell in love with and it’s still my favorite, I think (the darker part of the blobs matches the wall tile almost perfectly), but alas, it was not to be.

Since I had picked out a different color of Caesarstone and since it had been two months, I needed a new quote. Since the vanity was already installed I also needed them to come measure, the sooner the better. I never did get the quote. In fact I was expecting them to come measure that day when I got a voice mail at work informing me they wouldn’t be coming to measure because my job was “too small for them.” I was welcome to come choose from their remnant pieces but they would not bring anything into stock for me.

I figured this place must be off their rocker so started calling other stone places and got similar answers. Some would sell to me, but because they didn’t have a smaller piece of the color I wanted (“Organic White”) I’d have to buy a half slab for $1,600 or so. Before fabrication. At some point we’d like to replace the kitchen counters so maybe I could just use the rest of the half-slab for that. “Oh no. You pay for the slab but you only get what you use.”

Say what? So I pay for a huge chunk of quartz and you get to keep what I pay for, meanwhile I’m paying more than $200 a square foot for my vanity counter? Oh sure. Makes perfect sense.

Obviously, that’s not going to do. Even if we weren’t already horribly over budget (which we are) on this project, there’s no way I could justify that kind of money for any countertop, no matter how badly I wanted it. I finally called an area stone yard to inquire about remnants. They, in turn, told me they are a wholesaler, but hooked me up with a very nice guy who they work with (as far as I can tell, he’s nothing but a middle man. I’ve talked to him on the phone, send him the money, but the wholesale fabricator does everything else from the measuring to the counter, to cutting it, to installing it). After that I went out to the stone yard to look at remnants. Unfortunately they didn’t have what I really had my heart set on, but I found several other options. In the end I narrowed it down to two colors of quartz that I never would have considered otherwise.

Photobucket
Option 1 of the remnants (Hanstone Biano Canvas). It’s amazing to me that even though Quartz is manmade (well it’s mushed up bits of quartz mixed by a human with resin so sort of half manmade, half Mother Nature made), that slabs can vary so much. The actual slab we looked it was exactly the color of the wall tile, but far smoother in texture than this photo shoes.

Photobucket
Remnant option 2 (Hanstone Ruscello Aspen). The texture is about right on this one, but the remnant we looked at had very little or none of the brownish color that is coming through. It was sort of a warm gray, that just happens to be the color of our floor tile.  

In the end, I decided that I needed some texture as almost everything else in the bathroom is very smooth and solid. So I’m going in a direction that I never expected to: quartz that (sort of) looks like marble, but I never realized it looked like marble until someone mentioned it looked like marble.

Whatever. They are coming to measure on Monday. It’s time to get this show on the road.

Still, I’m starting to think that maybe “yellow tile or blue tile” wasn’t such a bad way to design a bathroom after all.

bathroom remodel
by Erin @ The Impatient Gardener 
3 Comments

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Comments

  1. CaesarStone says: January 14, 2011 at 4:52 pm

    Erin- I hope you received our emails and calls at this point, we are SO sorry to hear this happened. This is what we fear outside fabricators will do with customers, at CaesarStone no job is too small and customer service is of the utmost of importance so this is especially dissapointing! We have a solution in place with our local distributor in your area and want to be sure this is handled in a timely manner. At your earliest convenience please call or email us so we can rectify this situation.

    Sincerely,
    CaesarStone

    Reply
  2. Karen Lawrence says: September 12, 2017 at 11:57 pm

    Installed Caesarstone countertops in new kitchen last year and were certainly able to keep what wasn't used – a piece that may make a nice coffee table top one day.

    Reply
  3. Jacksonville Bathroom Remodel says: March 28, 2023 at 6:13 pm

    Great article! The dirty little secret about countertops is that no matter how clean they look, they can harbor bacteria, germs, and other harmful substances that can pose health risks. Even the most pristine countertops can have invisible scratches, pits, and cracks that can harbor bacteria and other contaminants. To maintain a healthy and hygienic kitchen environment, it’s important to clean and sanitize countertops regularly using appropriate cleaning agents and techniques. Additionally, selecting non-porous materials like quartz or stainless steel can help reduce the risk of bacteria buildup and make cleaning easier.

    Reply

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The Impatient Gardener

Do you love gardening? Me too! I'm Erin and I garden in Southeastern Wisconsin, zone 5. The Impatient Gardener is all about real-life gardening: the good parts, the bad bits and even the funny stuff. It's part information, part inspiration and a little bit commiseration. Thanks for visiting.

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Erin Schanen 🌿 The Impatient Gardener
I fell in love with gardening through container de I fell in love with gardening through container design and it’s probably still my favorite type of gardening. My trip to Philadelphia area gardens was full of so many excellent ideas. For several years I’ve been enamored with clustered pots, but in my opinion they work best when they are able to stand alone in a space. And you probably know me well enough by now to know that as far as I’m concerned, the bigger the pot, the better. Feast your eyes on these beauties and use your zooming fingers to really get into those nooks and crannies. 

Don’t forget to save your favorites because you know you’re going to be looking for them come next spring. 😀

Photos 1 & 2: Amazing container cluster at @longwoodgardens  that works particularly well because of the restraint used in the design. Also how many different ways is the universe going to tell me I need to grow agave before I actually listen?

Photo 3: This was probably favorite display I saw the whole time and of course it’s from the masters at @chanticleergarden This is a master class in texture. It’s also probably not attainable for the average home gardener because it relies heavily on tropicals that need proper overwintering in order to reach a good size. But there’s no reason why I (or you) couldn’t use this as inspiration to create a similar feel with other plants. 

Photo 4: Strappy foliage, bright orange and colorful pots create such a good doorway collection at @chanticleergarden 

Photo 5, 6 & 7: Similar colors were used at a patio doorway at Steve and Ann Hutton’s Owl Creek Farm home garden. A pot is perfectly framed by an arbor off a side patio. The front entrance has a pink theme (and an amazing feature pot that I couldn’t show here because all my shots are vertical). 

Photo 8: Back to @chanticleergarden where I could have studied this container planting for an hour just to soak up all the detail. 

Photo 9: And while I love a pot with a lot going on, never underestimate the power of a simply planted, gorgeous pot, like this one at @abunting64 garden Belvidere. 

#gbfling2023
I think every garden probably needs a little bit o I think every garden probably needs a little bit of water, even if it’s just a bird bath. All of the fabulous gardens I saw recently in the Philadelphia area incorporated water into them. Here are just a few examples of how lovely these water features were. 

@paxsonhillfarm @northviewgarden @brandywinecottage @longwoodgardens #gbfling2023
Gardens must have places to relax and enjoy the vi Gardens must have places to relax and enjoy the view even though we all know that most of us rarely take the opportunity to use them. The seating I saw in gardens in the Philadelphia area reflected their gardens and all were special. 

Make sure to share your favorite!

Photo 1:  I adored these perfectly lichen-covered chairs at @brandywinecottage

Photo 2: Great lichen game on this bench at Wayne Guymon’s mind-blowing garden WynEden. 

Photo 3: Perhaps my favorite seating moment of the whole trip was this chair in @jennyrosecarey @northviewgarden . Not only was it perfectly lichen covered (are you sensing a theme here?) but a volunteer cleome was growing right up through the middle of it. Unfortunately this photo of it isn’t grata because by this point in the trip my phone (I didn’t want to use my DSLR in the middle of the tropical storm so I switched to my phone) was getting very grumpy about the rain. 

Photo 4: I’d be happy to hang out on these chairs in @abunting64 ‘s gorgeous garden Belvidere. I loved this space. 

Photo 5: Color was the name of the game on this patio at Steve and Ann Hutton’s Owl Creek Farm. 

Photo 6: The most original table and benches I saw were at @abunting64 garden. This was a portion of the garden that was actually on the neighbors’ property adjacent to Andrew’s. It had been a vegetable garden but is getting a bit too shady so it will soon have a new life. 

Photo 7: We visited Barbara Tiffany’s Mill Fleurs in a deluge, which is a shame, and dotted throughout the property are examples of her husband Tiff’s amazing furniture. This was, called the Centipede was upholstered and quite different from the others. All were amazing works of art. 

Photos 8 and 9: The @scott_arboretum at @swarthmorecollege had some excellent seating, from brand new @deebenarc chairs to more lichen-covered charmers.

#gbfling2023
*** I can already see that some people do not unde *** I can already see that some people do not understand humor so let me just say this: 1. I was fully aware of the escaped convict situation (I’m an avid follower of the news, which is common for us journalists). 2. It’s ok to laugh about the fact that I’ve missed the Longwood meadow twice through weird circumstances while being a rational adult and realizing that I’m not making light of the situation that led to the meadow being mown. ***

I missed seeing @longwoodgardens beautiful meadow the first time I visited so I was excited to see it the second time. Not so fast! Turns out it had to be mown down during the search for an escaped convict who was hiding out there (at least that’s what I was told was the reason for the mowing). He’ll never see goldenrod the same way again! 😀

That whole situation was really unfortunate for @longwoodgardens (not to mention everyone who lives in the area), which had to be closed for about a week while the hunt was on!
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