TrueCorp: The Kitchen Counters Go In

Yesterday left me almost crying from happiness. It feels so surreal that we have the new counters in the kitchen now. After years of dreaming and months of intense planning and going over every detail they arrived and are even better than I imagined. You know when you are planning such a massive purchase you second guess yourself around every corner (especially on the things that can’t be returned like cut stone). We used North Shore Marble & Granite (we used them in a rental and in the last flip as well) and have had a great experience with them each time and this time our order was definitely more custom and they handled that beautifully (this is not sponsored).

We had a lot of square footage to cover so we set the budget at $75 per square foot which eliminated a good chunk of marble-like quartz that I was looking at. It was really helpful to have that budget and nix some options right away so don’t get upset if you are working on a budget. I decided on Mara Blanca Quartz from Q Quartz and ended up paying $72 / sq foot.

We also knew that we wanted the chunkier look to the counters because the kitchen was so large we didn’t want them to feel dinky in such a large space. We had the perimeter made double thick around the edges two inches in. North Shore Marble & Granite call it a “laminate edge” and some other places call it a “mitered edge”. There are two ways to do the thickened edge. One is to have a seam where the top of the counter meets the sides and the other is to have a piece glued under the full size slab of marble and harden for three days then have it cut (this is method North Shore uses). There will be a slight seam but it is unreal how non-noticeable it is. I am sitting directly next to the counter and I had to really look to see where the seam was. I walk around the kitchen and I’m thinking that I paid for a piece of art here… it’s incredible.

About a week before the counters were supposed to be installed I started to get really nervous about how thick the counters were going to be after AJ put a 2.5 inch board up on the counter. It felt ridiculously large and modern looking. I was reading Kristy Wicks’ Kitchen Q & A post and she mentioned she put an Ogee edge to her 2.5 inch counter tops and it looked simple and classy so I went to North Shore and asked about it. It wasn’t cheap to add on an Ogee edge, for the entire length of our perimeter it was $1450 (in comparison it was only $900 something to do the thickened edge around the perimeter). We knew we might need to wait on the bar stools and painting but I will tell you, it was 1000% worth it. I can wait on those things but can’t redo the edge of the counter once it’s installed.