Granite doesn't have to be either expensive or difficult to care for. It
really depends on the specific granite you choose.
We heard all the stuff about sealing and staining, and I didn't even like
granite before we got it. We picked ours based on what we liked, after at
least a year of looking, and it turned out to be an excellent choice as well
as a great deal.
First - sealing. That really applies most to marble, soapstone, and
limestone - it's way overplayed by the purveyors of alternative products.
Only some granite stains easily, and generally only the really light and
porous types. And many grades are resin-impregnated for strength and stain
resistance. We didn't see that fact played up anywhere, and I still don't.
How often do you see stains on granite monuments, on granite pavement, etc.
etc.? Some outdoor granite items that you see every day has been exposed
for a hundred (or two) years with no staining. You can bet that few
monuments or roads have ever been sealed. Of course nobody cooks in the
cemetery, but the birds, plants, pollution, and weather have their way with
outdoor granite every day.
We chose Napoleon Gold, which is quite light-colored and looks very porous,
but (ours at least) was resin-impregnated by the mill after being quarried
and sawed into slabs, and it's quite impervious. In addition, the installer
(an old friend) and I spent a couple of hours working sealer into the
counters (puddles of sealer spread by our bare hands) immediately when he
installed it - in 2005. We've never sealed it again and have never had a
stain. I keep asking him if we need to seal it again, but he says no.
We're not particularly fastidious. At all. Jill and the girls (me too)
have left everything on the counter - tomato products, oily tomato-based
sauces (which stain Tupperware immediately), red wine, Angostura bitters
(that stuff stains EVERYTHING), you name it. No stains, even when we've
found a spill that ran under something and was missed for days. We usually
try to remember to put down a towel next to the cooktop when frying to keep
hot grease spatters off it, but it's still had lots of hot grease on it over
the past 8 years. Slight darkening from cooking oil is supposed to be
fairly common with certain stones, but ours hasn't even done that.
We routinely put hot pots and pans on it - enough that I worry about warping
the pan sometimes. I wonder about doing that with the
plastic-plus-quartz/granite/glass products like Cambria, Silestone, etc.
They're stone/glass/etc. chips held together by polymer. Sounds like
something that might be hurt by heat.
Want to break up a frozen-solid bag of ice? Whack it on the granite counter
top. Not going to hurt the granite. Cutting directly on the granite is
rough on the knife but it's not going to scratch the granite one bit.
Bakers like to roll out dough on granite (or marble). Makes a decent
surface plate for precision measurements too, when Jill's not around...
Uba Tuba (a really common and beautiful dark-green/black granite) can be
under $25 per square foot installed. And try to stain dark green and black.
Our granite guy friend now also offers really economical granite from China.
Some of that is sub-$20 per square foot, installed.
YMMV
Karl
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