Kitchen surfaces

[Wilfrid]

Home improvement is something of which I am so ignorant, that this queston may be completely stupid and incoherent, so sorry in advance.

I have been working on nice marble kitchen surfaces for the last couple of years.  My new kitchen has very vulnarable looking surfaces, which I suspect are wooden with a pretty thin veneer of something or other synthetic.  Obviously I use chopping blocks, but these surfaces are going to be chipped and scratched to hell in a matter of weeks.  Obviously ripping them out is an option.  I just wondered whether, as an alternative,  there's any sort of covering I could apply which would make them more scratch resistant?

[Fat Guy]

If you don't want the expense and hassle of replacing your countertops, you can always just tile them. I tiled my kitchen walls in a day, and the learning curve was about an hour. If you have a flat counter surface, you can just spread tile-cement, lay the tiles with spacers, and grout in between. You'll need to cut the few tiles at the edges with a tile cutter, which is pretty easy. You'll get the hang of it after breaking two or three (they're so cheap it doesn't matter). Tile countertops are not ideal -- the grout can get dirty -- but they are more attractive than most, there's really no other good way that I know of to restore linoleum, and if you use a colored grout such as gray and you basically cover your countertops with big cutting boards, it should be fine. If you have a square front edge, you can tile that too, and you can make a tile backsplash while you're at it.

[Wilfrid]

Thanks for the idea.  My partner looks just like she'd be quite good at tiling!

[A Balic]

Wilfrid -  do they have an IKEA in NY (this could possibly be the most stupid thing I have ever posted)? If so they sell these very large chopping boards (something like 50 cm2) that are very useful, as they have a lip so they hook over the side of the bench and they have a moat to catch and blood, fluids etc before it hits the floor.

[Fat Guy]

There's an IKEA on Long Island and another in Elizabeth, NJ. I believe there's bus service from Manhattan to the one in Elizabeth. There is a lot of good, cheap, semi-disposable kitchen stuff available there.

If you tile, use thin tiles so as not to raise the height of the countertop more than a quarter of an inch or so. There's no shame in using generic white, gray, or black bathroom tiles for this purpose. Space them very close, so there's a minimum of grout -- that is, unless, through mathematical computation and properly sized spacers, you can tile the front-to-back run of your countertop without any cutting. Then you only have to cut for one edge plus the lip -- much easier.

Get a piece of plywood and a few extra tiles and practice your tiling that way for an hour or so. Or, it's often possible to get some kid who works at the tile shop to come over after work and do a small tiling job for cheap.

[Wilfrid]

I get the picture.  I don't want fancy little tiles with deep grooves between them, right?  And I also like the cheap child labour idea.  Thanks again.

[B Edulis]

Hi Wilfrid! The surface you're describing is formica, it's plastic laminated paper, and yes, it'll be beat to hell in a couple of years. An alternative that hasn't been mentioned is corian veneer. Corian is marble powder mixed with resin. It feels cold like stone but is more durable, doesn't react to acid like marble does, and you can rub out scratches. I don't know if you can have this done over existing tops or not. Home Depot carries it. But it's definitely not a d-i-y project.

You could also have the countertops removed and replace them with your preference.

I agree that tile's not the best surface, but if you're handy, it's amazingly easy to do. If you like, you can get more creative with the backsplash (I did my backsplash with broken commemorative plates). Go to a good tile store and they can fix you up with the right materials. There's a really good one one in NYC on East 10th St., Bella Tile.

[Fat Guy]

You could possibly get a Corian fabricator to come measure your countertops and create Corian overlays, but it would be a bitch of a job -- certainly no cheaper or easier than just buying new Corian countertops. Corian sucks, though. It's probably the single dumbest purchase I made when I spent my life savings renovating my kitchen a couple of years ago. It scratches easily, it totally does not look like stone (and it's warm to the touch), it feels flimsy (because it is), you can't put hot pots on it, and though when they sell it to you they say it's easy to get the surface refinished this turns out to be expensive, messy, and hard to get anybody to do. There are some newer synthetics and manmade stone products that I hear are better (Silestone is one), but if I had it to do over again I'd go with a combination of black granite, stainless steel, and butcher block -- different surfaces for different purposes -- just like in Ducasse's kitchen. I would in fact choose tile over Corian, given the way I work. You can positively beat the crap of tile with no ill effects. Wish I could say the same for Corian.

Yes, there are a lot of creative possibilities with tile. Even something as simple as alternating black-and-white tiles in a checkerboard pattern can be nice. For our backsplash, we did blue tiles with gray grout, but along one row we have, every sixth or seventh tile, a white tile with a raised aquatic-creature motif (a turtle, a fish, etc. -- all different).

Grout between tiles on a countertop can get dirty, but as I mentioned you can minimize this by using a dark color grout, working on large cutting boards instead of directly on the counter, and regrouting every couple of years. Unlike refinishing Corian, grouting is a half-hour-long project that any idiot can accomplish. You just take some grout and spread it in the cracks, then you go over that and remove most of it and shape it with a wet sponge. The idea is just to apply a paper-thin new layer -- like painting over your old grout.

[NewYorkTexan]

There is a new man-made stone product, Silestone, that claims to offer all of the attributes of granite counters, but is 20% cheaper than granite and is easier to install.  It is offered in approximately 40 colors.  

I put in tile counters when I moved into my house four years ago.  It was the best value of the acceptable options.  I found out the hard way I need counters that are heat and stain resistant.  They have several cleaners on the market that do a great job of cleaning white or light colored grout.

[B Edulis]

Steve S, thanks for the reality check on Corian. Guess I believed the hype.

Another surface made the same way is Fireslate, which is used in laboratories. I considered it when kitchen renoing 2 years ago, but it wasn't in my budget. Anyone out there tried it?

What I did get for countertops (third choice after fireslate and stainless) is bluestone, which is slate. I do like it, even tho' people complain about the porousity. It's a great value -- about twice as much as formica and half as much as granite or corian, plus it comes from NY state. I sealed it with boiled linseed oil after trying several other methods, one of which was $50 a quart and recommend by a store that should have known better. I got it with a matt finish and I like that it's visually warmer than granite. It also goes great with my loft which has massive pine beams and other early industrial details.

[Liza]

I second your decision, B Edulis - I've wanted to compliment your counters but the thought always got away from me. I find your counters very easy to clean, and very forgiving of darker stains. I think that's a benefit of the matte surface, don't you?

[Wilfrid]

Continuing thanks, and I'll let you know which option we get around to trying.

[Fat Guy]

I've heard nice things about Silestone, but my experience with Corian has led me to reject all tromp l'oeil countertop materials. I mean, you see stuff built from granite two thousand years ago, and it still looks great. How old is the oldest Silestone countertop extant?

I suppose a lot of this depends on how badly you plan to beat the heck out of your countertops. I mean, you can replace linoleum with linoleum or low-grade phony butcher block (real wood, but not real end-grain butcher block) for pretty darn cheap, and if you never work directly on those surfaces they'll last for decades. My mother took countertops like the ones you describe, covered them with contact paper at a cost of about eight dollars, and never messes with the surface -- she does all her work on cutting boards or, more often, on the dining table. They look fabulous after many years. But if you're like me and you need to be able to drop heavy stuff anywhere at any time, pound on things, work with hot pots, etc., without having to give any of it a second thought, you need to move up to a serious material.

[Wilfrid]

One uses woodwn chopping boards, of course, but I have two concerns:  first, needing, as you say, to drop things or put them down quickly when there's a lot going on in the kitchen at once; second, my Better Half's propensity to cut and chop and drop hot pots wherever she likes, even when there's almost nothing going on in the kitchen.

[MrDelicious]

Look at some of these beautiful recycled glass/concrete counter tops. I've seen them in person. Some of them have stunning color combos!

http://www.vetrazzo.com/eng/products/color_palette