I haven't had a chance to take any good close ups of the counter top stone since they were installed, so here is a close up of the slab I went with.
Just kidding. I didn't win the lottery. But I did fall in love with that stone. She was just a bit out of my league, so this is what I went with for reals.
So it is a honed super white Carrara, even though I never thought I would do marble in the kitchen. After dealing with the lowest of lows over the highest of high prices for all of the quartzites I had to have, this was much more friendly to the budget. I was initially really worried I wouldn't be able to tolerate the etching and staining, but then I started thinking about places where you always see marble kitchens and I immediately thought of France. I love all things French and if anyone does fine cooking and living well right it is the French. If marble works for them, clearly it will work for me. I have polished Carrara in a bathroom and the scratching drives me nuts, so I went with honed in the kitchen so the scratching won't be as much of an issue (fingers crossed!). I will still have to be on my A-game as far as mopping up my red wine spills and lemon juice goes so there won't be terrible staining, but I am pretty anal about keeping a clean kitchen anyway so I think that will be just fine. I am actually excited about the aging and changing the marble will do over time and the patina it will get. Check back with me in 5 years and hopefully I will still feel the same way.
I looked at A LOT of slabs. A LOT. I am not kidding when I say I went to different slab yards upwards of 30 times. I was being picky but I also had my eye on a particular stone. And one of the reasons I actually chose the stone I did is because it reminded me of one of the stones I wanted the most, known by many as Super White.
Perhaps the most hotly debated controversy since the blue and black vs. white and gold dress saga from earlier this year, the classification of Super White seems to really rile up people in the stone world. You can check out the debate here, here, and here. I sought it out at a number of different wholesalers in Raleigh, and I found it labeled differently at each location. Some places categorize it as a marble, some as a quartzite, some as a granite, and some as a dolomite. Some places said they won't even carry the stone anymore because there have been lawsuits due to mislabeling the stone. That was just barely enough to scare me off of going with the Super White, combined with the fact it was over double the price of the stone I ended up choosing in the end. At the end of the day, as much as I loved it, I couldn't justify paying 2.5 times the price for a stone that may end up etching and staining just as much as a similar, definitively classified marble. And if I am really lucky, maybe the marble I chose will have some of the dolomite characteristics of the Super White since they look pretty similar. Here's to hoping.
I looked at A LOT of slabs. A LOT. I am not kidding when I say I went to different slab yards upwards of 30 times. I was being picky but I also had my eye on a particular stone. And one of the reasons I actually chose the stone I did is because it reminded me of one of the stones I wanted the most, known by many as Super White.
Perhaps the most hotly debated controversy since the blue and black vs. white and gold dress saga from earlier this year, the classification of Super White seems to really rile up people in the stone world. You can check out the debate here, here, and here. I sought it out at a number of different wholesalers in Raleigh, and I found it labeled differently at each location. Some places categorize it as a marble, some as a quartzite, some as a granite, and some as a dolomite. Some places said they won't even carry the stone anymore because there have been lawsuits due to mislabeling the stone. That was just barely enough to scare me off of going with the Super White, combined with the fact it was over double the price of the stone I ended up choosing in the end. At the end of the day, as much as I loved it, I couldn't justify paying 2.5 times the price for a stone that may end up etching and staining just as much as a similar, definitively classified marble. And if I am really lucky, maybe the marble I chose will have some of the dolomite characteristics of the Super White since they look pretty similar. Here's to hoping.
And without further ado, here are a few more shots of the new countertops:
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