Kitchen Countertop Confidential

My last post about some script hijacking a blog post of mine has two ironies I find amusing. The first is the obvious one that the bot creating the phony blog used a post about a television show called Kitchen Confidential in an attempt to get links for people looking for Granite Kitchen Countertops. The second irony is that I had long been considering a post of my own about Granite Kitchen Countertops.

We’ve lived in our townhome for about seven years and really haven’t done a lot of improvement projects. One my wife had always wanted was to replace the crappy contractor grade laminate countertops with something a little more sturdy, like Granite Kitchen Countertops. The old countertops had a lot of marks from when I was too lazy to use the cutting board and where also fairly easily stained and hard to keep clean.

When my new neighbors moved in next door, the embarked on a series of renovations that had us rolling our eyes at their zeal, but also slightly envying their determination. When a Granite Kitchen Countertop vendor showed up, my wife grabbed his card and dragged me to his Granite Kitchen Countertop shop deep in an industrial warehouse district.

The owner was a Turkish stone mason that spoke with a heavy accent. His cohort at the shop spoke no English at all. He had huge panels of granite ready for cutting. We thumbed through the 8 foot by 12 foot sheets of granite to find a color that would go with the Pfaltzgraff Yorktowne border I had put in our kitchen. We settled on an inch thick slab that had streaks of blue, black and tan. Since our kitchen isn’t very big, the cost was affordable and competitive with what Sillstone or Corian would have cost at a BigBoxOfLumber™. While the pictures don’t do it justice, the final installation really added a lot of zip to the kitchen. The most impressive feature is that the ell-shaped piece at the sink is a single piece of Granite Kitchen Countertop with no seam whatsoever.

Old Laminate Countertops

New Granite Kitchen Countertops

I am not particularly handy and I keep my home improvement projects to the easily correctible. I do try to fix plumbing problems where I can. I’m able to field strip a toilet in no time from years of practice. A while ago I had a coworker teach me enough soldering to be dangerous. When my kid was at camp, I replaced the shower valves in both bathrooms in less than a week of evenings. So once we had our new Granite Kitchen Countertops, I insisted on installing the new sink faucet and garbage disposal myself. I’m proud to say it came out fine with a minimum of foul language.

Cheap Pantry and Cupboard

New Pantry and Cabinets

We made the mistake of mentioning to the Granite Kitchen Countertop guy that we had always wanted to add a few cabinets and a pantry since our kitchen didn’t have a pantry and we had been using an old toy chest of mine for overflow storage. He said that we ought to do the cabinets as soon as possible since there would no way to match the granite color later if we delayed. That spurred a week of searching for cabinets customizable enough to fit into the space we had and still match the rather inferior grade of cabinet we already had. For a minute there I feared becoming a scene out of Mr. Blanding Builds His Dream Home. It all turned out ok as you can see. My wife finally got the broom closet she always wanted and we were able to eliminate a lot of clutter.

Old Sink

New Sink

With the new cabinets in, we thought we might like a granite ledge at the foyer pass-thru to match the one at the sink pass-thru. The Granite Kitchen Countertop guy said he might have one piece matching our granite left and he would come by to measure it up. He did and warned us it might be a few days before he could get back to install it. Then weeks passed by. I was beginning to get annoyed. I resolved to give the guy a call and force the issue.

One Friday I needed to sign a receipt and set it down on our new granite ledge that I hadn’t realized was there. I had no idea when it had been installed. I yelled up to my wife, who told me it had been there since Wednesday afternoon. She had sworn my son to secrecy and they had been snickering behind my back for two days. I’m never going to live down that testament to my absence of powers of observation.

Two more small ironies. My neighbor ended up not replacing his countertops and my wife now complains that the granite pattern hides dirt too well and it’s hard to keep the counter clean. No winning for losing.

Blatant Link Whoring™: I’ve managed to use the phrase “Granite Kitchen Countertop” nine times (now ten) in this post. Give me a little linky-love to this post and I’ll see if I can become the new center of the universe for Granite Kitchen Countertops. Just drop the following phrase inconspicuously into your blog and I’ll post an update if it results in anything amusing.

<a href="http://livebythefoma.blogspot.com/2006/06/kitchen-countertop-confidential.html">Granite Kitchen Countertops</a>