LESLIE: Now we’re going to talk tile counters with Mike in California. How can we help?
MIKE: Well, I was – we installed a tile countertop in our kitchen about seven years ago and the grouting is kind of a mess and we’d really like to have some kind of surface that we can cut on and we can also put hot things on but not too terribly expensive. I was wondering what options would you recommend for us.
LESLIE: Hmm. So you’re looking to start over. I think if you’re looking for something that’s scorch-resistant and even – you know, I wouldn’t really ever recommend cutting things directly on your countertop because, number one, it’s bad for your knives. But if you feel like you’ve got to do it, something like a – those engineered quartz products; like a Silestone. You know, they’re scorch-resistant; they’re antimicrobial. You can sort of, if you get cut marks on them, eventually sand them away jus the tiniest bit and you’ll always be going through that surface material so you’re not going to wear away or wear away any coating. But I would say, you know, get whatever countertop that you’re interested as far as aesthetic and price-wise and then get yourself some nice cutting boards because you don’t want to damage your knives.
MIKE: Can we install this quartz type ourselves?
LESLIE: Not generally because it’s kind of an intricate cutting process for your sinks and your fixture placement and what-not and usually the price point tends to include the installation and the companies really aren’t going to stand up to warranties if you go ahead and install it yourself.
MIKE: Alright.
TOM: Leslie, what about the option of him using stone remnants in creating his own countertop, like they did the last time?
LESLIE: Oh, absolutely. If you’re using something as far as a natural stone or if you’ve got smaller counter areas, you might be able to go to a granite yard and sort of see what they’ve got odd remnant sizes of and get a great price because you’re able to utilize something from a similar species of granite that, you know, even if it comes from different slabs if they’re not adjoining to one another it doesn’t really matter if they match up and that could keep the cost way down for a beautiful natural stone product.
MIKE: And we could put hot things on that?
LESLIE: Oh, yeah.
TOM: Absolutely. Hey, Mike, I tell you what we’re going to do for you. This will help save you a boatload of money moving forward into the future. We’re going to give you a one-year subscription to The Money Pit’s American Homeowners Association membership which is chock-a-block full of discounts on all kinds of home services. Perhaps you can use your membership to help find some contractors to help you with the tile and there’s lot of discounts as part of that and lots of other things around the house from insurance to groceries to eyeglasses. So we’re going to give that to you just for calling in today on the program.
MIKE: Oh, fantastic. Thank you very much.
LESLIE: You’re so welcome.
TOM: (overlapping voices) You’re welcome, Mike. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT. And stand by, Mike, because we’re going to take some info from you. And for those of you that are interested in the Money Pit membership, you can log onto our website at MoneyPit.com because right now we’ve got a great promotion going on. We are giving away a Zircon laser level and a Zircon OneStep stud sensor to the first 1,000 members that sign up for the Money Pit American Homeowners Association membership.
LESLIE: Mike, you’re going to get them, too.
TOM: Yes, that’s right. All that information is available at MoneyPit.com.
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