Kitchen Countertops

The week after the cabinets were installed we had the counter tops lined up to minimize the time without a working kitchen.

On Monday evening Oct 15th our good friend delivered and installed the wood island counter top.  One of our other friends had a counter top like this and Matt fell in love with it.  I have rarely seen him so excited about anything as we was about this counter top   Since it is perfectly square 52"x52" we got to decide which direction we wanted to wood grain to go after it was made and we could move it around before he screwed it into the board underneath.

It's solid walnut pieces glued together with a food safe wax finish that we put on about once a month.  We decided the rounded edges would be easiest to clean.  I liked the look of the more detailed edges but I didn't want to have to clean all the little grooves   The kids have bonked their heads on the corners a few times- I'm hoping putting the bar stools under will help with that.

It really is a beautiful piece of wood with some great character.  It's not heat proof and scratch proof like the granite- but overall the maintenance/babysitting hasn't been bad.  The beauty more than makes up for it! It's not a butcher block- so we won't be cutting on it- we just really liked the look and feel it brought to the kitchen to have the island be a contrasting warm material to the granite.

 On Wed. Oct 17th the granite counter tops were installed in one afternoon.   We went back and forth on solid surfacing, quartz, granite.  But after looking at them in person we loved the granite so much more.  There weren't too many with grey in them that would also look good with our copper sink. This granite is called New Azule Aran and it's from Brazil.  Even buying this stuff was quite the experience.  We bought 2 slabs and we got to inspect and pick our exact slabs. The pictures don't do the granite's depth, sparkle, and coloring justice but we love it!!  We went with the 6mm edge in the kitchen which makes it look like a huge piece of granite.  It really is a work of art.  It hides everything- I have to remember to wipe them off because it hides the crumbs so well.

They had to build it up with 2 boards because of the thick edge.

We only have one seam in our granite in the whole house - right behind our sink on the small section behind the faucet.  There are seams on the edges and back splashes also I guess.

They put in the sinks at the same time- then Matt did all 5 faucets, disposer, and new dishwasher himself over the next couple of days. Functional sinks again!  It was so nice to have counter tops!   I waited awhile to unpack everything since we were still waiting on some cabinet doors but it made a huge difference to have the sink and counters back!