![]() ![]() We liked that the LG had slightly softer/lighter/less veining on a slightly whiter background, but they’re very similar. Our first choice for the faux-marble was LG “Minuet,” and second was Silestone “Blanco Orion,” which you can see above. Tip #4: Find out who the supplier is for your big box store & ask if they can get something you like that isn’t offered! We decided that we want to do plain solid white quartz on the long back counter (Silestone “White Zeus Extreme,” not pictured), and a marble-looking quartz on our island. Get cost estimates from both, though, because you may get lucky. Because Lowe’s and Home Depot sell so much volume, they can afford to sell by the square foot, instead of charging you for an entire slab, but the stone supplier will charge you for an entire slab, even if you only use half of it. Here’s why: Lowe’s and Home Depot don’t stock or cut or install the stone themselves, but contract out the work to local stone suppliers, acting as a middle man. Lowe’s was over $2,000 cheaper for the exact same materials! That’s HUGE, you guys. We got a cost estimate from the supplier and also ran the numbers at Lowe’s. Tip #3: Big box stores charge by the square foot and stone suppliers charge by the slab! We liked three quartzes at the stone supplier, two of which were also available at Lowe’s (Silestone “White Zeus Extreme” and “Blanco Orion”). So we took our floor tile and cabinet piece in there, too, and it turns out some of the options that had looked terrible at Lowe’s looked really good in decent lighting. They had some of the same brands (like Silestone) and some other brands (like LG), great customer service, but best of all… GOOD LIGHTING. ![]() So, anyway, after we got frustrated at the big box stores, we decided to visit a stone supplier. We did all of this frantically in one weekend two weeks ago, when our kitchen was already half done. We love stress. So… Tip #2: try to start planning counters early so you can buy samples online! Oops. You can buy counter samples online, but the one we wanted had an estimated ship date of JULY 27, two months after we need the counters! Yep, you can’t take anything home, so we had to drag a floor tile and piece of cabinet into the store to compare, only to find that the lighting was so bad we couldn’t make any decisions. The lighting is horrendous, the customer service was mostly lackluster, and worst of all, no samples. Tip #1: Look at the same samples in different light! First we went to Lowe’s and Home Depot, and honestly, we were incredibly frustrated with the experience at both of them. The process of picking our counters was really stressful for us but we learned a bunch that we wanted to pass along in case anyone else is in the same situation! ![]() We did a ton of research into what material would be best for us and decided on quartz because it doesn’t require sealing, doesn’t stain, works with undermount sinks (we didn’t know you can’t do an undermount with certain materials like solid surface), and is offered in the colors we wanted. We always knew that we wanted quartz, but we never got around to looking into them until a couple of weeks ago. ![]() We finally chose counters! So you’ve now followed along as we decided on our kitchen layout, floors, cabinets, appliances, and here’s the story on the counters. ![]()
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