Our Intro to Kitchen Counters and Tile
Well we’ve gotten started… sort of. Last week we had a contractor come out to quote our kitchen and bathroom projects. We talked about what Jason and I are interested in doing and she took measurements. She said she would get a quote back to us in a week or two. My biggest concern with that idea was that we hadn’t even discussed materials. I’m quite aware that the price of things like tile and cabinets and whatnot can vary wildly. So was she just going to base her quote on the middle of the road materials? The cheapest to keep the quote low? But we will see how that problem develops.
She told us to go to Arizona Tile to choose our counter tops, kitchen floor tile and bathroom wall and floor tile. So this morning we took a trip out there. It was a lovely experience.
To begin with, we of course had the boys with us because they pretty much go everywhere with us. This is usually a total hassle on errands like this because Gray is fidgety and is like lugging around an anchor, and Ben gets bored quickly and starts with the whining. This problem was immediately avoided because they have a little staffed childcare area that was windowed and visible from almost every area of the showroom. We checked the boys in and they were quickly immersed in a video and a large collection of toys.
We started off in the Slab Showroom to choose our counter tops. It was a hardhat only area:
Jason and I were totally fascinated by the machine that transported the huge pieces of granite.
We wandered along the rows of beautiful natural stone and, as we usually do, pretty much agreed on which we loved and which we didn’t care for at all. We narrowed it down to four:
It was an interesting shopping experience because the slabs weren’t labeled with anything but their names, so we had no prices to influence us either way. I feel like prices are usually such an influence in so many different ways. We definitely want a deal, and would never decide on the most expensive, but we tend to be prejudiced against the very cheapest too. So when we walked out of the show room, our choices were purely about aesthetics. Of course, when we handed out list to the woman who was helping us, she commented ominously, “Ooo, don’t you have champagne taste?” OY. I mean, I guess it makes sense that the prettiest ones would be the most expensive, but good lord, we had to love the most expensive, didn’t we?
They gave us samples of the counters we liked to take to the tile showroom and find what we liked that matched. It helped us narrow things down even further.
This first combination is the Blue Guagain granite with Slate Grigio tile:
We’re thinking if we chose this combination, we would do maple cabinets with a pewter (light gray) stain.
The second combination we liked was Verde Tunas Classic granite with Gemstone Africa tile:
With this busier and more colorful combination we think we would do again a maple cabinet but with a light natural stain.
Whew. Now we just have to find out how much it’s all going to cost. I’m so excited!