Post Punk Kitchen Forum

I have ugly laminate right now, and I'd love to upgrade but there's no way I'd put in granite. It's too much work and not an effect that would look good in our kitchen.

I'd rather have PaperStone countertops http://www.paperstoneproducts.com/products-panels-slate.php. The concept is really cool (recycled paper!!!) and the look is very minimalist, which I like. Plus it develops a patina as it ages, and if it wears or dents, you can sand it out and use a little of their finish on the sanded spot to repair it.

If I had the money to remodel our kitchen I'd do this in a heartbeat.

fake granite - black with like tan and rust colors in it. works just fine for me. came with the house.

I have Cambria (quartz) and I love it! I used to have these light grey laminate crepe counters that were awful! Any little speck of turmeric or curry powder left awful mustard colored stains, red wine left little purple marks on it, and marinara stained it too.

I didn't want to have to deal with sealing granite, and my center island has an overhang (one of those islands that you can put chairs against to eat at the counter) that would have required brackets if you used granite. Quartz does not require support brackets for overhangs. It also is stain resistant without needing to be sealed.

Love love love!

(I always use a wood cutting board, I didn't realize people cut right on their counter tops - except of course for butcher block)

We have mostly granite, and I really don't like it. BUT I did have a huge butcher block put in, and I love love love love it. I say go for a giant butcher block. You'll never look back!

I have gray granite countertops--they're pretty serviceable. I never cut on them and never set hot pots/pans on top of it either, so they still look really decent. I love the look of the Corina countertops though!

I have solid oak counter tops. These ones http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/catalog/products/80123672/ I like them, it took a bit of getting used to to have to wipe up water spillages quickly so as not to damage the wood & we treat it with special oil about once a year.

Ooooh i'll be the first one to talk about concrete countertops from experience!

OK, my sister and i moved in upstairs of a duplex that my parents owned and when they bought it my dad put in concrete countertops. The upstairs one had a textured concrete that was stained a brown color. Then Over the summer, my cousin moved out of the downstairs and i moved downstairs where i have the same color, but it's a more polished concrete that has exposed aggregate ( you can see the stones and stuff in them)
The upstairs ones kind of suck, there's a random stain from someone leaving a chemical on the countertop when they were putting it in, and the concrete is pretty absorbent so any time we spilled oil or something on it, it would leave a oil spill mark.
Mine now are a little better on that front as they are more polished and sealed so they don't stain as easily, but somehow my cousin rough-housed a huge chunk out of the main workspace area so there's a pretty nasty looking gash there.

My sister is currently in the process of doing Skimstone with my dad, which basically you add a thin layer of a concrete-type thing on top of it and then sand it super smooth and shiny. If it works out well for her i'm going to do the same thing with mine.

My mom recently moved into a new house with the MOST AMAZING kitchen and my dad having perfected the concrete countertops more made hers super awesome. She's got unstained exposed aggregate concrete, but they are super polished and sealed so they are almost like granite.

i wish i had some pictures or something.

so yeah, concrete... really awesome looking but not quite so practical.

We have granite (similar color to what monkeytoes posted), plus a butcher block island. I'm pretty happy, especially considering the countertops in our last house were motherforking CONTACT PAPER.

Quick pics of my italian kitchen with bamboo parquet

That bamboo is beautiful!

We will be remodeling our kitchen hopefully in the next year and have been working through this issue! Our last rental had granite countertops, and although I'm sure they were the cheap kind that offgassed radon or whatever, I LOVED them since I do a lot of pastry and I could chill the counters before working on my dough. We didn't live there long enough to need to reseal them or anything, so I can't really testify to their longevity.

However, I'm a little concerned about dating out kitchen to c. 2005 if we put granite in again. I originally wanted to DIY concrete counters and stain and seal them (check out the books by Fu-Tung Cheng if you are interested!) but we would need to reinforce our cabinets a LOT to do that. We are learning toward Corian now and I've been impressed with how stone-like the stuff we looked at is. I also like quartz/Silestone but it's pricier? We've also thought about doing the Ikea butcher block or a nicer-looking laminate in most of the kitchen and then putting in one section of marble or other higher-maintenance stone just for pastry.

Utility-wise, though, I actually don't hate our current laminate, except for the super-'80s light blue color! I've considered resurfacing it for the time being with the Rustoleum kit that Kittee mentioned, but I'm a little nervous since we did live in a place that tried to resurface their laminate and it all was chipping off...however I'm not positive they did it correctly. :)

I love that bamboo!

I had horrific laminate in a fake butcher block pattern and replaced it with Corian last year. I LOVE the Corian, especially because you can get the sink built right in so there is no seam to get grody.

Before:


after:


The only downside is that a hot pan can damage the surface, so I always have to be careful not to put them in the sink before rinsing with cool water.

I like the fake (?) granite in my apartment, but mainly because my last apartment was crappy plastic laminate that had been poorly sealed and started to warp and would trap moisture underneath and get moldy on the edges and sometimes water would squish out of the seams while I was chopping something or putting something down.
My dream kitchen would have what Anek has. I like.

Anek, I love your kitchen! Those seem like awesome countertops. Honestly, I think anything is better than Formica countertops.

For the record, I don't like the granite countertops in our house either. It's mostly an appearance thing for me to be honest. I just think that unless they are 100% clean (in which case, they are almost reflective and are very beautiful), they look SUPER filthy. Like even if it's just a little bit of filth. Also, I literally have nightmares about accidentally etching them.

Where I really hate granite countertops, though, is in our bathroom. Because of the moisture in there (I guess?), the counters pretty much always have this sort of film on them and it looks horrible. I'm not gonna scrub my bathroom counters every day though. Yuck.

I just want to say I want to smash every granite countertop I see with a sledgehammer to get it back for all the smashed plates and cups it has created on its evil surface. I think stainless steel is the most practical but it may not look right depending on what the kitchen is like, and it seems to require you to have big fancy new appliances to go with it, which is one of the things I disdain about granite. I have formica thats circa 1960 since the kitchen has not ever been redone, and it appears to be holding up nicely. After all this time there were no significant stains on it until I put a not quite dry cast iron skillet down on it, now there is unremoveable rust circle marking on the surface, which makes me sad.

i have a freestanding ikea butcher block style table thing, it has storage underneath which is nice for my tiny kitchen which has no storage or counter space.

Marble is nice, if you win the lotto.


ETA: but I never drop stuff on the counter. My dishes always die on the floor

Only a single narrow leg? Is that sturdy enough to have sex on?

<3!

Bamboo looks great though... I may have to rethink my stone upbringing.

I'm surprised at all the broken dishes= granite countertop stories. I have yet to break a dish (i.e., plate, bowl) but have broken only one glass and I've lived here almost three years. And I am Miss Butterfingers. In fact, in the Guild of Butterfingers, I am the Butterfingerist.

Are you guys practing juggling or sumpin over your granite counters? My friend once dropped a beer bottle on our friend's slate kitchen floor and I'm pretty sure they're still going to find shrapnel from that incident decades from now because it really shattered into many tiny little shards...

I have a cutting board made out of that stuff: http://www.preserveproducts.com/product ... board.html

Yes. Yes it is.
Also, the body of the counter is made of drywall, with a structure of steel. The extra leg is only to make the countertop longer: it's screwed into the drywall, and glued together with the bamboo. It's extremely solid.

My husband actually made our concrete countertops himself. He built molds for them and poured the concrete in our basement. Five of his friends had to come over to help carry the counters up the basement stairs and in to the kitchen. I like them better than any other surface I've used. We put in an undermount sink with it so that you can just sweep crumbs straight into it. It's also nice to be able to put a hot pot or pan down on the countertop without a trivet. My only complaint is that they are bone white and prone to staining. If anything tomato-based gets on the counters it has to be wiped up pretty quickly even though the countertops are waxed and sealed. If they were darker they'd be perfect but we're idiots who wanted bone white counters.

Sweet.

We'll be over in an hour.