After much discussion, and seeing several articles on the ease of DIY installation we decided to swap out the granite beside the stove for soapstone! Not that it was hard, we haven't even ordered the granite yet. Soapstone is a softer stone, often used for carving. The soapstone for countertops actually comes from Brazil and is harder than that. It never needs to be sealed and
"Unlike granite, marble, quartz or man-made composite surfaces, a soapstone countertop is chemically neutral, which makes it non-porous and virtually impervious to all types of products that may stain other surfaces. There’s no need to worry about spilt wine, olive oil, Soya sauce or a myriad of other culprits that will permeate many natural stones commonly used for countertops."It is also highly heat resistant (used for fireplaces, wood stoves, etc) which is the main reason I like it.
We ventured to places I've never been...Uxbridge area to a soapstone place. I had contacted a few to find out if they sell small slabs and this one was the only one who replied back, and the closest to us. They are wonderful people and were very patient with us. We went out to their stone yard and looked at a bunch of small slabs. The large slabs are just as big as a granite slab & they will not sell those to random DIY-ers. It's too dangerous.
The stone yard
Our piece in it's raw or natural state. It's called Classic Original and is actually not available any more as the supply has run out.
How it will look once we treat it with mineral oil
Loading it up into the car
So there we were, taking home our two new small slabs and were very excited! So excited that we figured, what the heck, we should be ordering our granite as well. Since we had sourced out the granite slab last week at a different importer, we knew from the fabricator that the price would change as we were not using his granite. This is to be expected so we went over to his shop with our new plan that now included soapstone! It wasn't going to work out price-wise although he did try very hard. We did a lot of discussion and after about 3 hours went a different route with the granite. Out with the Giallo Ornamentale and in with Ghiblee. The name is not as exotic sounding but here is a picture of the new kitchen island granite, and the soapstone will be opposite the island on either side of the stove. We did also order our bathroom vanities - so the master bath will be in Giallo Ornamentale - the fabricator's slab worked for that room - and the guest bath will have a white hanstone countertop (quartz).
Oh yes, DIY soapstone is about 1/3 the price of fabiricated soapstone & about 1/2 the price of fabricated granite. "Fabricated" means slab plus cutting, finishing & installation.
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