Countertops - cheaper alternatives to granite?
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Anonymous
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I think the wood would look great with the ivory cabinets, but wouldn't work with the stained dark wood. It would look too matchy if that makes sense. I tried googling to find a picture of wood tops on wood stained cabinets to see how it looks, but all I could find was wood on ivory, white or other painted color cabinets (not stained). I think the reason why I couldn't find this was because it's not done very often, perhaps because the two don't work together. You also rarely see wood as the perimeter countertop, it's usually only on the island. So if you had an ivory island with stained wood perimeter cabinets, I would definitely say do the wood on the ivory island. However, I'd worry that it would look funny to do wood on the perimeter and something else on the island. I know this doesn't help!
The two materials that I think would look best on ivory plus dark wood stained would be something black (soap stone, honed granite, black corian) or something with cream or golden shades (a quartz, marble or stained concrete). Other than perhaps the corian, I don't think any of these would be cheaper than granite. While I'm not a fan of granite, if you like it, there are many shades of the lower cost granite (Carioca Gold, St. Cecilia, Giallo Ornamental) that would work with your cabinet combo. If you shop around and stick with the basic edge, I think you'll probably be able to find the granite for less than you think. I'd really look at your budget and see if you can swing something nice for your counters. You don't want to renovate your kitchen, then kill it with a cheap looking countertop, since that is probably the single most prominent thing that jumps out at you in a kitchen. We just finished a major renovation and I never would have imagined how stressful it was making all the selections! |
Anonymous
I agree, especially because simply replacing counters is a relatively small job (when you consider how badly most of us would want to erase the previous owners... ahem... "taste" and how many places in the home this "taste" would be expressed). |
Anonymous
There was a discussion of this very issue in July's Consumer Reports issue on kitchens: http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine-archive/2011/july/home-garden/your-new-kitchen/countertops-and-flooring/index.htm |
Anonymous
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We have butcher block counters , with white cabinets, and it is gorgeous.
We've had it over 3 years now. I personally think granite is "past its time" so to speak, sort of the crazy excess of the housing boom. In the future we'll probably look upon it how we look upon Avocado Green or Harvest Gold appliances. |
Anonymous
| I totally agree with you about granite counters. That being said, while I love wood on white, I don't think wood on wood stained cabinets would work. |
Anonymous
| Why are you going with the dark wood island? Are you wanting something visually different for the island? How large will this island be? If it is not massive, you may want to try to find a salvaged cut of marble or something, because wood on wood could be weird.... |
Anonymous
We're going with the dark wood island bc we want a contrast in the room, instead of all while cabinets and also we were advised that the dark wood wouldnt show as much wear as if we did the island in the white as well. I thought about doing a diff countertop for the island and the perimeter of the room, but I thought the countertop is what was going to bring the island and the perimeter cabinets together. |
Anonymous
I hear what you're saying, but I agree with the PP--I wouldn't put a wood countertop on cabinets that have any kind of natural wood (i.e. stained rather than painted) finish. You might want to check out some of the finished kitchen pics on Gardenweb's kitchen forum. There are many, many beautiful kitchens that have islands with both different cabinets *and* different countertops than the perimeter of the kitchen. I also agree about doing a light-colored counter with dark wood cabinets. Marble would probably be beautiful and not overly expensive in such a small slab. The light-colored counter will help visually tie the island to the perimeter because it coordinates with the light color of your perimeter cabinets. |
Anonymous
| If your island is small enough, you might be able to find a remnant slab to use (of marble or any stone for that matter). The problem you're going to run into with marble is that the most common and cheapest is Carrara marble. However, Carrara is white to grey with grey veining. The cool tones of the grey would clash with warm tones in ivory cabinets. Calcutta gold marble is gorgeous with ivory cabinets, but this option is quite expensive (twice as much as Carrara or most granites). Creama marfil marble would look really nice with the wood island and tie in with the ivory cabinets. Since this is a popular option for bathrooms, you could probably find a remnant pretty easily if you made a few calls to fabricators. |
Anonymous
| We saw beautiful countertops at Ikea today for $130 sq/feet. i don't know how that compares to the price of granite but the one we saw was absolutely beautiful. |
Anonymous
Granite runs between $50-95 per sq ft. |
Anonymous
| The problem I found when pricing a new countertop wasn't the square foot price of the granite, but the cost of removing the old countertop and installing the new one. That's what made laminate not that much cheaper than granite, so it ended up not being a reasonably priced option as I had hoped. |
Anonymous
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Corian is a better product than granite. It was out before granite.
It has a lot of colors and you can get it to look like granite. |
Anonymous
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Here's a list of different countertops from Apartment Therapy. There are some options that haven't been mentioned on DCUM that might work for you.
http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/chooosing-kitchen-countertops-147495 |
Anonymous
Ugh. Disagree. My friend's mother installed Corian and hated it. She said that if you looked at it wrong, it stained. Basic cooking stained it frequently including tomato products, wine, vinegars, and many other food products. She said she spent a ton of time keeping it clean. Also, the surface is very soft and scratches easily. She found that is you weren't careful with good knives, they could nick and cut the Corian because it was so soft. Moving knives and other metal around the sink could scratch the surface and after even a year, it was much rougher than the counter. We have Corian in our bathrooms and it is soft. We've had people put heavy bags with metal buckles, etc on the counter and pull them off and leave scratches in the surface. I have one gouge that we have no idea how it happened in our least frequently used bathroom and we have to find the time to sand it down and then repolish the surface to restore it. Corian is only good if you are an infrequent or non-cook. If you use your kitchen frequently (or have active kids around your kitchen) then it isn't a good surface for you. |