LESLIE: Terry in Alaska is on the line and has some questions about the best surface for kitchen countertop. How can we help you?
TERRY: I’m working on my third house. Third house is supposed to be free when you build them yourself but that ain’t working out. But at the point here we’ve got the kitchen cabinets all brand new from factory, in boxes. And now we’re at the countertop dilemma before we really get going. And every one of these TV shows, if they ain’t granite, the people are like, “I ain’t buying the house,” and that kind of stuff.
TOM: Hmm. Yeah.
TERRY: But I was thinking granite and that stone stuff’s over $100 a square foot around these parts. So I’m trying to – the last laminate that we had was pretty darn good. And kind of wondering at what – in the future here, is laminate dead?
TOM: I don’t think so.
What do you think, Leslie?
LESLIE: I mean I do not think so. I use them a lot on projects for work and I use them on my TV-design shows. I actually just did a bakery in Brooklyn for our design show on the Bravo network. And I used a laminate that looked just like a Carrara marble. Granted, it had seams in some places and you knew it wasn’t the real deal but it looked gorgeous. And it was a fraction of the cost. It’s really amazing how many options there are.
There’s a couple of brands you should look at for surface for kitchen countertop. It’s Formica. It’s Laminart and Wilsonart. And you can order sheets from them. You might find a better option than what you might find at your local home center. I don’t know how much shipping might be to Alaska but there’s a ton of great options out there, from things that look like a natural surface to just completely outrageous things. So, I wouldn’t be afraid of a laminate.
TERRY: I did see they started having better – I don’t know – the edge trim and then they tried to make the 45-degree miters go way better. I’ve got 50 square feet of this stuff and I was thinking if I buy granite, I’ve got to stare at granite the rest of my life because it costs so much. But if I buy laminate and I don’t like it a couple years down the road, I can rip it out and put some new without too much work.
LESLIE: Yeah.
TOM: All those people that get granite, they love it when they first get it. And then they slowly but surely begin to hate it because that surface for kitchen countertop is hard to take care of. Because it’s stone and it soaks up …
LESLIE: I hate mine.
TERRY: Yeah.
TOM: Yeah, it soaks up everything.
LESLIE: I don’t hate it for the maintenance reasons; I just don’t like the look of it anymore.
TERRY: Yeah. When they’re doing the open houses around here, I kind of run through some of them. And I see that they basically put the granite countertop in there but they got the cheapest cabinets you could possibly buy.
TOM: Right. Yeah.
TERRY: So they’re making up for it somewhere but I’m not (inaudible) to me. So I’m not playing that game.
TOM: I guess. Alright. Well, thanks for calling, Terry. We hope that helps you out.
TERRY: Yep. Thanks. Bye.
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