Countertops?

[pinkytoe]

Recently, we put a new sink in our old countertops - one of those weirdly divided sinks and ultimately - one of those why did we do that decisions? And a new faucet which ends up puddling water everywhere because of its bad design. The whole setup is a disaster and now that the dishwasher broke...I am thinking we are going to start over with this and make it work - on a budget of course.
I am looking for countertop ideas - we have only 35 sf - so not a huge area to cover. I don't have a clue what to put in since we will be selling in a few years. Currently, we have granite tile so I know I don't want grout lines anymore. Any thoughts?

[catherine]

I got quartz for my BIL's house and also for mine recently. We both have small 70s kitchens--price was about 2000. I'm very happy with it.

However, if your budget doesn't allow that, if I had needed to spend less, I'd go for laminate. I know it isn't sexy, but it's changed a LOT over the past decades in terms of style and color options. My SIL has a beautiful Sarah Susanka-style house that she built, and she chose laminate. Also my son bought a charming restored house that had JUST been redone up in Burlington, and the builder used laminate and you really can't even tell that it's not granite until you're up close.

ETA, I forgot to add that when we prepped my MIL's house for sale we replaced the counters with laminate and they look nice.

Also, the only reason I didn't choose laminate for our kitchen is because DH is a careless cook and he ruined our last laminate by putting a hot pot on it and burning it. He was ADAMANT that the countertop be heat and scratch resistant.

[Rogar]

I had laminate counter tops installed a few years ago and they are totally functional and are wearing pretty well. I think you can get laminates that look pretty much like granite or marble, but it shows wear a little more. My philosophy was that the more expensive materials may last longer and look a little better, but the way kitchen fashions go what ever you get may well be out of style in ten or fifteen years anyway.

[SteveinMN]

Rogar makes a very good point about the timing of the installation. Anything put into a kitchen in 2013 is going to look dated by 2023 or 2033, well within the service life of anything that got even a bit of care. Some buyers will toss perfectly good countertops and appliances just to change the style.

So one question I think you should answer is what people expect to find in homes like yours. When I replaced countertops about 5 years ago, I was thinking that I might have to sell in a few years. At that time (peak of the housing boom here) granite was becoming quite common in houses in my price range. I hate granite, for many reasons. At the same time, however, I wasn't going to spend thousands of dollars installing an alternative or "green" countertop that I was not going to get to enjoy myself. So I went with laminate with a nice edge treatment. I was lucky to hire a good installer who figured out how to cut one piece of laminate into the three I needed without any seams. It looks fine years after installation.

Laminate, indeed, has come a long way since the Boomerang days. Laminate can look like anything, is not very expensive (half the price of granite or solid surface), and lasts a long time if people are not careless with it. There are ways to address that, too, by putting stone (matchy-matchy or not) on either side of the stove as a landing spot for hot pans, or by building in a cutting board elsewhere so people are not tempted to slice right on top of (and into) the countertop.

[iris lilies]

I don't think laminates look like granite or stone, and I don't think they've changed much in 15 years. That's why I'm keeping my boring, grey laminate countertops because I don't want to spring for expensive stuff, and all of the laminates out there thrill me as much as my current one. We do have, like Steve suggests, tile on the surface next to the stove. There was one stone/resin mix that really excited me at The Home Show, but when the rep came out to measure, she said it's not available any more. So, that is just as well. The other surface that I found stunningly beautiful is colored concrete , but that stuff is more expensive than granite.

[Tussiemussies]

We just put in laminate with a beveled edge and it looks really nice....

[pinkytoe]

Some buyers will toss perfectly good countertops and appliances just to change the style

Yes! I am a craigslist peruser and notice listings fairly often from the fancypants hoods where someone is demolishing a kitchen that looks like it might be 2-3 years old. I am hoping to score some nice counter top from one of these do-overs. As far as putting in what is being used in our neck of the woods for resale, I have not seen any formica though I would consider it. Seems like everything around here lately is ultra modern with recycled glass, quartz,marble - things that are over my "spend authority".

[Kestrel]

We build our own home in '76 (with our very own hands, no contractor) and to save costs a little and since we had some paneling left over, we used that for countertops. For some reason we put the grooved side up, which seemed kind of weird at the time, but it worked out really great. Remember, those were our hippie years ... We sold it in '89 and moved, and two years ago we went back to see it (it's still beautiful!) and the people who own it still have the wood counters and love them. They've been refinished, but they're beautiful and still work great. I'd do wood again ...

[catherine]

We build our own home in '76 (with our very own hands, no contractor) and to save costs a little and since we had some paneling left over, we used that for countertops. For some reason we put the grooved side up, which seemed kind of weird at the time, but it worked out really great. Remember, those were our hippie years ... We sold it in '89 and moved, and two years ago we went back to see it (it's still beautiful!) and the people who own it still have the wood counters and love them. They've been refinished, but they're beautiful and still work great. I'd do wood again ...

Cool story! And great job of repurposing.

[bae]

We moved into this house ~13 years ago. The counters are some sort of thin white laminate of Formica or something, atop oak frames, and the stuff was perhaps 10 years old at the time. It looked dated when we moved in, and I always meant to replace it Some Day. Well, 13 years later, Some Day hasn't come yet, and it has held up just fine. Doesn't look amazing, but works well.

What I like about it is I don't care about it at all, as I intend to replace it, yet it doesn't complain about my mistreatment. And stuff doesn't break when I drop it onto the surface, unlike granite.

I'm not even sure what it is, and it can't have cost all that much.