Image Source:
Home Depot Canada Granite Countertops
March 28, 2003|By Molly Knight, The Baltimore Sun, Tribune Newspapers.
Image Source:
Granite has consistently agitated a acceptability as a archetypal beauty. But added recently, it has become a booming business in home decor.
"Granite is absolutely hot," said Stephen Stran, buyer of Harford Radon & Real Estate Repair Inc., who has been adjustment homes in Maryland for 25 years. "Recently, I've apparent it acclimated not alone for countertops but additionally for custom applications like amount treads and borders about flooring. Ten years ago, I didn't see any of this happening."
A contempo analysis of architecture trends by the New Jersey-based National Kitchen and Bath Association letters that 37 percent of homeowners who adapted aftermost year chose granite for their countertops. That was a 14 percent access from 1995 and the No. 1 best for countertops.
Minnesota-based Cold Spring Granite, one of the better suppliers of the bean in North America, boasted its accomplished granite countertop sales anytime aftermost year.
Why the abrupt absorption in a bean as old as Earth? The acknowledgment is availability, according to those who assignment with granite. Because of bigger quarrying techniques, the amount of granite has alone as abundant as 40 percent during the accomplished bristles years.
Image Source:
"At one time it was a affluence item," said Delbert Adams, admiral of Ilex Construction and Development in Maryland and Virginia. "But recently, because of new quarrying technology and lower prices, it's become accessible to all ranges of homeowners."
Quarrying granite acclimated to be a bulky action that appropriate drills and explosives. Today, best of the world's quarries, concentrated mainly in China, India, Sri Lanka, Brazil, Canada and in New Hampshire and South Dakota, use continued loops of animate cables abounding with chunk (the Earth's hardest stone) to allotment calmly through sections of granite and abstract them from the quarry beds. This adjustment has added the accumulation and bargain the costs.
Like lava, granite is an ablaze bedrock that forms abysmal underground, boring cooling and crystallizing. It is fabricated up predominantly of three minerals: quartz, feldspar and mica. Because anniversary granite drop contains capricious accommodation of these minerals, every slab of the bean looks different. For abounding homeowners, this is granite's greatest draw. Unlike constructed abstracts such as Corian and Formica, the colors and textures of granite change every few feet.
"It looks amazing," said Bel Air, Md., citizen Lisa Karalekas, who afresh replaced her blooming coat kitchen countertops with a dark, brindled granite.
"The blush is so rich, it's absolutely adapted the room. Plus, I apperceive that no one abroad has the aforementioned counters. My acquaintance ability accept the aforementioned blush of granite in her kitchen, but she doesn't accept the aforementioned counters."
Image Source:
Karalekas, an accountant and mother of two, added: "It's additionally absolutely accessible to affliction for."
Granite is a absorptive stone, acceptation it can be calmly decrepit with aphotic substances like red wine or grape jelly. Sealing it, however, is an accessible action that can be done already a year. Although some homeowners accept their counters closed professionally, food such as Home Depot advertise bottles of adhesive for about $20.
"Granite acclimated to be a jewel that alone the affluent could afford," said Paul Bird Sr., a kitchen artist for Home Depot in Catonsville, Md. "Now those bodies who grew up with coat or Formica, both accustomed materials, are able to accede a jewel like granite."
At Home Depot, granite is priced in the aforementioned range, amid $70 and $125 per aboveboard foot, as Corian and Silestone, constructed abstracts created to attempt with granite. (On the everyman end, coat countertops are about $20 per aboveboard foot, and on the accomplished end, marble can be priced up to $180 per aboveboard foot.)
"It's so abundant added affordable these days. And already you put it in your home, you'll never want--or need--to put in annihilation else," said Bruce Badolato, buyer of Badolato Granite in Baltimore, which has angled its granite sales back 2001. "Its adorableness is absolutely unmatched."
Image Source:
Unlike constructed materials, granite is accessible in bags of colors. Every quarry produces a audible palette of the stone. Anniversary time a new quarry is opened, a new blush joins the market. The stone's affluent colors are dotted with flecks of crystals that sparkle, giving the actualization of movement on the stone's bland surface.
Even added ambrosial than granite's color, according to those accustomed with the stone, is its durability.
Granite measures a 7 on a calibration of 1 to 10, according to the Measurement of Hardness calibration for stone. A stainless animate brand registers a 6, acceptation it cannot blemish the apparent of granite.
"It's so adamantine that we angled the corners of our counters," Karalekas said. "If you run into a granite corner, you can absolutely abrasion yourself."
Granite additionally can bear temperatures up to about 900 degrees Fahrenheit, which agency a hot pot or a frying pan can sit on a slab of it after causing burns or melting.
Image Source:
Corian, one of the best accepted alternatives to granite and created by the DuPont Co. in 1971, can be aching with a knife and will bear temperatures up to about 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Because it is synthetic, Corian is added constant in blush and arrangement than granite.
"Some bodies like a added compatible attending to the countertops," said Bird of Home Depot. "But the affectionate of bodies who like characteristics like knots in copse will adopt granite."
Image Source:
Image Source:
Image Source:
Image Source:
Image Source:
Image Source:
Image Source: