Countertops are one of the most significant investments in a kitchen remodel so before you decide what type of material you want to use, watch this video. Scott and Bethany talk about different countertop options and discuss in detail granite, quartz, and quartzite.
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Hey everybody, Scott Monday with Kitchen and Bath Crate, and this is Bethany Davis, and Bethany what are we going to talk about today? Today we’re going to talk about countertops so my husband John and I just did our remodel last spring and before we started it was really overwhelming to me as to where to start with choosing countertops there is a lot to pick from yeah so someone like you can help someone like me uh know where to start and give us some guidance on maybe the pros and cons of some of them absolutely so let’s dive in so uh Brian and the Fab shop was kind enough to cut gosh what do we have here eight different samples of material so really the categories that you’re going to deal with in countertops is going to be your natural stones okay so your granites and your quartzites and there’s there’s going to be your man-made Stones which are what people just kind of universally call quartz which I’ll tell you why that is misleading so which one do you think we should start with in terms of our dialogue here uh let’s start with granite okay okay so great at here let’s you hold one up and then I’ll hold one up all right so Granite um is a natural stone all right and what we have here is we have a polished granite and we have a leather granite and really all the differences is the the finish on the top the Polish is obviously much more shiny I see it in the light and kind of like shake that one a little bit you can see this one is a more of a matte finish and let’s put them back down but as you like run your hand over the top of the leathered it’s got like how would you describe that it’s like it’s not rough not rough but almost like smooth concrete maybe yeah like texture textured yeah yeah so it’s kind of a cool feel so your your granite um I’d say it’s probably been around as a countertop for 30 40 50 years yeah even back to like granite tile before there was much granite slab so super durable once again it’s natural stone and we had two dark colors here but it does come in a an array of different colors but probably skews a little dark in terms of a countertop type so that’s granite and then let’s maybe go here yeah okay and one of those now you really like this one huh I love it yeah so this is quartzite you might hold that one up too so these are quartzite countertops now quartzite is the Natural Stone this is 100 natural quartzite is a natural stone that they use as the base material Stone in quartz countertops so that’s where the name quartz comes from but quartzite is the natural version of that and so quartzite tends to have really movement to it and you can see it has some movement through here as well it also is going to be a little more expensive it’s it’s a pretty expensive material in terms of the ranges of materials here we’ll put those back over there and so quartzite is going to be good for your designs where you want kind of that rich Natural Stone and where maybe the budget can allow for a little bit more of a cost per square foot but really I think quartzite is one of those materials that that kind of provides a little bit of a wow factor when people walk into the kitchen I think it’s kind of going to be a higher proportion of wow factor if you will so that’s quartzite and then we have what quartz right there’s four samples here so you hold this one which one is this I think they’re written on the back this is Pietra gray yeah Pietro gray so this is man-made probably about 80 percent resin and 20 quartz stone and you’re going to see quartz everywhere from this one that has like a little bit I guess a little vein to it right very minimal yeah yeah but pretty monochromatic to a very monochromatic like a black right this is a black with I don’t know Flex if you will okay two we see this a lot so you hold this one hey these are my countertops those are your countertops so these are two different uh quartz uh types or colors if you will that simulate more of a kind of like a marble which is a model so marble simulated quartz is very on Trend right now um I think the reason people like marble simulated quartz is you have kind of like the universal look of marble right which in your house very much the case because your house brings in some really cool Trends where we’re going kind of back to some natural woods and so to bring in a natural looking quartz you get the advantage of the man-made material the durability the stain resistance and all those things but you also get the kind of the warmth of a of a marble look definitely yeah yeah um and these tend to come in a lot of different tones and colors and movement or less more movement less movement right absolutely yeah especially your quartzes are going to range everywhere from gosh you can get them that they straight up like the one we’re on right now this is just almost like a straight up navy blue I’ve seen them in Orange which by the way at the office I want to do an orange table there in the bullpen yeah so one day we’ll do a video about that all the way to you know a lot of movement and veining and things like that for sure awesome all right so what about other material countertops like Ledger block concrete marble porcelain tell me a little bit about those yeah so we’ll start with the marble because we’re kind of talking about natural stone versus man-made so marble is natural but the problem with marble is it’s very susceptible to staining so I’ve seen red wine stain it I’ve seen uh lemon or any Citrus with acid stain it I’ve seen turmeric stain it which obviously turmeric right you can get more sort of sustainable stained stainy yeah you can’t get much more stainy than turmeric but but Marble’s gonna not hold up well to those types of conditions right so you’re going to want to be careful with that um then let’s talk a little bit about some of these unique ones um so Butcher Block obviously made of wood kind of like formed together into a countertop um it just takes a lot of Maintenance yeah you got to keep it oiled you got to keep it from anything seeping into it and then just over time depending on where in your kitchen it’s located if it’s near the sink your life on that’s going to be a lot less than if it’s more on like an island like this concrete very much a specialty install I mean if you can find a concrete countertop insulator installer in your area good luck because you’re going to probably have one to choose from he’s probably been doing it for forever but uh there’s not gonna be a lot of people that do it it is a very challenging implementation imagine literally having to form up this countertop just like you form up concrete on a pool deck or something like that coming up with the Right Mix pouring it and then it’s going to be porous concrete’s porous see now you have to seal it and you have to maintain that seal right so really cool look kind of a nightmare to have as a countertop and then stainless steel obviously you see it a lot in commercial applications we don’t see it a lot in standard residential kind of some of your higher end residential will kind of roll that into the mix a little bit but those are your specialty countertops yeah very cool so there you go those are kind of your specialty countertops if you will so any other questions for today I think you answered all of my questions but if you guys have any questions leave them in the comments below and I will make sure that we get them answered and be sure to hit the Subscribe button it helps more people see our video.
