Bungalow Kitchen Countertop

Progress continues on Projectbungalow. This week the kitchen countertops were installed.

I selected honed absolute black granite for the countertop material. Originally, I wanted to use soap stone but it’s 2-3x the price and your kitchen cabinets must be built to accommodate this material. The key difference is the plywood top needs to be inset versus on top of the cabinet structure. My cabinet maker placed the plywood on top of the cabinets.  John Yeh with Colormason, my countertop installer, also told me that the cabinets have to be just about perfectly level to use soapstone. The reason being is the stone sits directly on the counters — so if you have to shim the material to create seamless joints the underside of your counter top will have gaps relative to the cabinets.

Here is a picture of the material i used — isn’t it gorgeous

I also installed a Oliveri stainless steel sink. This was a great value at roughly $900. Its heavy gauge stainless and comes with a stainless steel drain grid. Additionally the inside edges are all radius, so cleaning and maintenance will be much easier than the Blanco I was originally considering.

This part of the project including material cost about $3,700. What an improvement.

Now I need to get started on the backsplash — I think green glass tile just might do the trick