Another random option is zinc
A friend did that with the intention that over the years the patina and dents would resemble a French bistro
Looked really nice but you have to know what your getting which is not something that will stay the same
Personally, I love my black granite.
Or folks could mimic the kitchen tops at the Edsel Ford estate in Grosse Pointe - Sterling Silver. Some maintenance required
We replaced granite with Caesarstone when we remodeled. I never put hot pans directly on granite so that was not a consideration for me. Biggest downside of the mostly white counters is it shows everything. Every crumb. Which maybe is a good thing actually, but with our busy granite counters you could not see anything.
The new counters will stain from certain things like red wine or curry, but Barkeeper’s Friend takes it away with minimal effort. So far very happy with it.
Before and after below.
There are thousands of types of granite, from very subtle to insanely striking patterns. There are 6,464 pictured here…
https://www.stonecontact.com/natural-stone
I would not have anything else. The Amber Fantasy that we have hides everything, and looks like new after 18 years.
We’ve had soapstone in our kitchen for 17 years. I love it. That said, I wouldn’t do it again. Too soft. Many, many scratches and chips that have become a patina that I’ve grown to accept and love. But that first chip/scratch when it was new was almost too much to take.
I’m still waiting on the full walkthrough of your kitchen. Between the countertops and cooking devices curious minds want to see the whole set up!
We are currently working with a designer to redo our kitchen and she is recommending and we are going with quartzite with a honed finish. As an aside some appliances are not readily available. We were looking at a subzero fridge and it has an “estimated” 6 month lead time, and to be safe we were told figure 7 months.
How do you like the Franke sink? Thinking about going with that as well.
I have black granite in my kitchen and honed black granite in the man cave wet bar. I do love it and it stays much more timeless than some of the other color granites.
We did a leathered black granite in our kitchen almost ten years ago. Still looks great today and I don’t believe looks dated one bit. The slab we chose had some green veins in it. It actually looks like a soapstone but with no maintenance. Highly recommend.
Our granite is “blue pearl”, which is black/dark gray with lots of mica “flashes”. If this is dated, it’s staying that way
Excellent. Zero issues in three years. (Reno is fairly recent).
It’s a very very close match to the Caesar stone counters, if you’re interested I can check the exact colours. The low divide is very clever , giving two sinks that can handle v large tray etc if you full above the divide.
5mm corners which was a key issue for me. (I hat the 0 mm sinks)
Seems to be quite robust. We are careful but don’t baby it. . I have not tried dropping large cast iron pot from a height! I also do not put hot high thermal capacity pots of any kind on any of the quartz counters or sinks. They are either allowed to cool or put on some sort of board or pad. Zero dings. No stains (but it’s black).
I got the optional drain / cover (steel bars in rubber frame that you can roll up). which is very handy.
The only issue we have, which may be more a matter of choice of faucet / water pressure is if you have something drying in the RH sink, and rinse something over the LH sink, you have to be careful not to splash what’s drying. First world problems!
Relative to our space and needs , it’s a good sized sink, but It’s not industrial sized !
They have stainless steel too but I can’t vouch for them.
I’ll try to get you a better picture ( it’s surrounded by dishes right now!).
As a slight thread drift, the original (to us) countertops were laminate. My guess is Home Depot early 80s vintage. They were indestructible in terms of heat or stain. They were starting to look worn , but basically in damaged, as we began gearing up for Reno (one of several motivations for it ) about eight years ago. No idea if modern laminates are as robust.
The best product to clean stains off a light coloured composite stone bench is a mild automotive cutting compound
We love ours.
David, some of us have entered that “dated” phase! Cheers.
Thanks! We have a Blanco granite sink in the game room - but I really don’t it enough to know how it would function as an every day sink.
On the “dated” look of granite - is it color or edge?
The fancy edges need to go, but with a simple edge, similar to what you see if quartz/quartzite, can you really tell the difference between similarly colored granite and quartz/quartzite?
Fashion is usually cyclical. My “dated” granite will eventually be “retro chic”
Hopefully at the same time as my avocado green fridge…
We have trendy quartz/quartzite countertops. They’re beautiful. And expensive. And seemingly not nearly as practical or durable as granite.