Counter Intelligence

So, the counters went in and they look great. It was a one day job and although there is still some touch up and a side piece to go in, things went pretty well.

We went with soapstone. The name makes it sound like it is soft and in relative terms it is, but hey, we are still talking about stone here. It does scratch easier than other stones, but the scratches are relatively easy to sand. The neat thing about it is that it has a lot of character with some pretty neat marbling wrapped through it. My pictures don't do it justice but I'll give it a shot.

Here is the main sink and dishwasher side of the kitchen. Once I had seen the below the counter sink set up at my in-laws', I knew it was what I wanted in our new kitchen. It is super convenient to just sweep things directly into the sink and I never liked the exposed lip of the sink on our old counter. (It just never seemed clean.

The little prep sink is great but I think we may have made a (hopefully correctable) mistake. It is super handy to have a second sink there when two of us are in the kitchen but yesterday when I did my first cooking in the kitchen; I realized that we should have a garbage disposal in there. Our plumber had recommended against it but now I'm having second thoughts. The main sink is where the dishes will get scraped but I think the prep side is where a lot of the peels and what not will be most likely to end up. Still, it's all good. We'll see.

Like I said before, there is neat marbling in the stone. There are veins of other rocks and colors. There is a lot of green in the stone and right next to the stove there is a cool patch that has the look of obsidian or emerald ribbon candy.

The appearance of the counters changes dramatically as mineral oil is added. The oil doesn't penetrate the surface but it helps in the natural darkening process that the stone goes through. The counters go from grey to almost black after the oil is applied. There are other swaths of green throughout the counter. It does give it real character. This picture is in-between oilings so you can see how much the counter color lightens up. (Although, it isn't quite this bright, I just took a bad picture.)

We have a small counter next to the fridge. The "side splash" on it still needs to be installed and while it looks great, I think we are going to have to change it. The front of the counter extends too far out and the refrigerator door hits the corner abruptly. Rounding the corner might be necessary or trimming the whole front. Moving the fridge is a limited option but we'll have to find a happy medium.

We were going for a semi-rustic sort a kitchen look and the stone countertops are helping to pull that off. They go really well with the white cabinets and the stone looking tile we used.