Post Punk Kitchen Forum

I thought it was so cut and dried, benchtops, until I read this thread.

Now nothing is ideal, and someone needs to invent something. Then put it in my kitchen. For free.

Ok I really really really want granite countertops. I told my husband I spent most of my day in the kitchen and I want a nice one. So one day when we can finally afford it, we are going for granite. Both of my sisters and my parents have it and they love it. We make and eat dinner at my parents all the time and you can cut on the granite and placing hot pots on it is fine. I do know you can use vinegar on it so that would be my only concern. All family has a variation of black, which is what I want, and it has looked nice since the beginning.

Oh and I would never use a knife on granite to chop up a lot of stuff, but slicing an apple or something was never a problem for the counter or knives.

good to know! My husband has been pining for an expensive bamboo cutting board for awhile, now I have a reason to talk him out of it!

I like the soapstone! I don't have it presently (I don't really have my own counters at the moment), but it reminds me of the stuff lab benches are made of and my dream kitchen would look like chemistry lab.
But I'm a weirdo.

this thread is making me bitter. i lived in an apartment with no kitchen counters (literally no counters; sink and stove mushed together in an alcove, and the rest of it just big enough for a refrigerator and a freestanding pantry) for three years. i used to take my cutting boards into the living room and chop vegetables on the floor, because there was nowhere else to work. now i have a 14" by 18" patch of workspace next to the stove and an ancient wooden cutting block/cart thing that dips in the middle so that chopping with a chef's knife works only if i do it in the top right-hand corner. i would love any counters, made of granite or wood or cinder blocks or old traffic cones or anything at all.

I think I said it before in this thread...but I do love my granite counters. Got a great price, and the guys installed it in less than 8 hours. So all of you that have contractors taking 2 weeks with a forked up kitchen, don't fall for it! It took a DAY.

I don't cut on them, but I have done other 'wrong' things like put hot pots down, and left lemons cut side down. (although I try not to do that too often)

It's a nice black with flecks of red. Then I painted my kitchen a red/wine color and it looks excellent.

this thread made me google "kitchen counters of the third kind" and 4 unique results popped up. every thought that could be thought has been thought.

dang it, I have a bamboo cutting board! who knew?

I plan to just have formica countertops in my new kitchen that LOOK like granite, in a formica-y sort of way.

I thought bamboo cutting boards were 'good' for your knives? I have bamboo...and my knives do go dull pretty fast.

wooden countertops for the win! it is pretty standard here in Scandinavia; we even removed the cheap formica in our rental apartment in order to install an ikea birch-countertop. it was really cheap, and still looks awesome after a year of heavy use. ours is treated with oil; i really like the oil finish.

but i would never ever cut anything directly on the countertop! i mean, if the countertop is too hard it will wreck your knife, if the countertop is soft enough not to wreck the knife, the knife will wreck the countertop. it is basically a lose-lose situation.

We have some sort of black-with-speckles fake granite that was here when we moved in (5 years ago) and it's doing just great. No complaints about it whatsoever. I don't know if it has a brand.