Kitchen Remodel Planning
When you look at a remodeled kitchen, certain features stand out — stainless steel kitchen appliances, an open and light-filled design, the island or cabinets and hard-surface counter tops. In a recent survey of the choices homeowners are making in designing new kitchens and baths, two particular types of counter tops stand out among the options, "granite" and "quartz" counter tops.
Quartz counter tops are man-made of mostly ground natural quartz, also called engineered stone, mixed with seven to ten percent manufactured materials consisting of resins, polymers, and various pigments. Due to the pigments added to the ground quartz, the color and texture within a slab are consistent, giving quartz its uniform appearance from slab to slab within a batch.
Granite counter tops, on the other hand, are natural stone quarried from the earth in mines across the globe. Before it arrives at your local counter top showroom, it is cut to manageable-sized panels and polished to a mirror-like finish.
Granite is composed mainly of quartz and feldspar with a mixture of other minerals. The percentage of these ingredients combine to provide variations in color and pattern. Like a fingerprint, no two granite slabs will be the same. This natural variance makes it crucial to choose the exact piece you want installed rather than choosing from a sample, which may vary significantly from the final product. It is granite's natural variation that often leads homeowners to choose it over quartz since quartz is mostly uniform in color and consistency. On the other hand, quartz's consistency is something other owners appreciate. They see this as an opportunity to match their kitchen color scheme and design without fighting the natural busy pattern of granite.
For the budget conscience there are other materials for counter tops like Formica
