My Bloomington Kitchen Remodel...page 12

Day 18. The counter tops are in and, whoa, they are not what we ordered. It is 'glitterama' in our kitchen now!

We went with Silestone which is a composite surface. We went this way so we could have an indestructible counter top. They say that you can put a boiling hot pot right on the counter top safely...though they also say to use a trivet for good measure.

As I said before, this is my fourth total kitchen remodel in the past ten years. Three years ago, when we remodeled our kitchen in New York, I had planned to go with Silestone "Stellar Night" which is meant to look like black granite with tiny bits of mica throughout. We ended up going with carerrra marble and I feared damaging the counter tops every day. So this time i went for indestructible.

What I got was counter top that looks like it has been plugged into a electric outlet. Our sample looked just like I had intended, but somewhere between the sample and the recipe they used to make our run of tops, the sparkle content increased ten fold and the pieces of mica are huge...mirror like...blinding.

So we called the Silestone regional rep. He came to the house and agreed that the counter tops were probably not the look that I was going for and he said that our sample did not match the final product. Then he said that they can drill out many of the large pieces of mica and re-seal the counter tops. We'll see how that goes.

Otherwise, our painter called in Terry Maners to do the drywall work and it looks great. The final painting will happen today. Next up are appliances and de-sparkling our counter tops. Ouch! The sparkles hurt my eyes when the light catches them.