And another thing about soapstone...

After I finished that last bit about soapstone, I picked up my current copy of K+BB, a kitchen and bath trade publication. The cover photo this month is of an uber modern kitchen renovation in Hawaii that features soapstone counters. Here are some shots of it, please pardon their lousy
resolution and small size.

I really like this kitchen and the more I read about it the more I liked it. The designers behind it used a line of German cabinetry called Studio Becker. Studio Becker is about as good as it gets as far as I'm concerned. They are exquisitely made and their finishes have to be seen to be believed. They will also set you back farther than any other line of cabinetry I can think of. If people have an awareness of a high-end European cabinet the name they think of is Poggenpohl. Studio Becker makes Poggenpohl look like junk from Ikea. I kid you not. I go on regular pilgrimages to the McKB (that's the Manhattan Center for Kitchen and Bath if you're not in the know) specifically to run my unworthy fingers over their Studio Becker displays.

So this tells me that the kitchen I'm showing you here set these owners back in excess of $100,000, probably well in excess of $100K. That's all well and good too, if you want to spend that kind of money on your house than God love you for it. Please make sure you call me first. Hah! Anyhow, this design ended up with its own name. I don't know if it came from the homeowners or from the designers, but this design has been dubbed "Zen."

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but Zen is a school of Buddhism whose adherents turn inward in a search for inner peace and wisdom. The practice of Zen encourages people to turn their backs to the trappings of the world and instead concentrate on more weighty, non-temporal matters.

Now I ask you, how is spending more than $100K on a kitchen renovation in any way Zen? Man that drives me nuts.

So my rantings aside, soapstone can be used to terrific effect in a modern setting, even if it's unpardonably labeled "Zen."

Please pass the soapstone

Another metamorphic rock that makes its way into homes is steatite, commonly called soapstone. It's composed primarily of the mineral talc with a healthy does of magnesium for good measure. The magnesium is where it gets its grey color. Soapstone formation occurs in regions of tectonic subduction and in the presence of water. Let me whip out my rock phase illustration again.

By the time a slab of soapstone ends up in some one's home, it's between 400 and 500 million years old to give you some sense of the timeline involved in its formation.

Soapstone is soft. You can write your name in it with a fingernail is how soft. Due to its high talc content, it feels somewhat like a bar of soap to the touch, hence its name.

Even though it's very soft, it's an excellent material for kitchen and bath counters. Unlike a lot of stone, soapstone is neither alkaline nor acidic and is completely inert. That means that virtually nothing can make it react chemically. Vinegar and lemon juice, the great etchers of marble, have no effect on soapstone. It's virtually non-porous, so oils and dark-colored liquids can't stain it.

The stuff's used for table tops in chem labs for a reason.

Most people oil their soapstone with mineral oil but this doesn't do anything but enhance its color and minimize the appearance of the hairline scratches it will accumulate over time. In its un-oiled state, soapstone is grey. Add mineral oil and it turns black. With repeated applications, this oil-induced black color will become permanent, but that's due to the oil oxidizing on the surface of the stone.

Soapstone's an excellent heat diffuser and that's why it gets used to make fireboxes and wood stoves. It's also water proof and that's why it gets used to make sinks and cookware.

Soapstone is a great material to use in a kitchen. Its grey-black color is an achromatic neutral and that means it will go with anything. If you're considering a kitchen renovation and you want to try something different but still a natural stone, think about soapstone.

Onyx is not what you think

The polished rock pictured above is true onyx. Onyx is a form of quartz called chalcedony (what a great word) that's usually associated with volcanic activity. As a form of quartz, chalcedony is composed of silica. It's formed when water dissolves silica to the point of saturation. What precipitates out of the saturated solution is chalcedony. Chalcedony, or true onyx, is a semi-precious stone that's used primarily to make jewelry.


The materials I'm showing above are sold as onyx, but they are an unrelated stone. Repeat, they aren't really onyx. That certainly doesn't distract from their beauty, but knowing what things are is important.

The stones shown above are a form of calcite called sinter. If you go to a stone yard and ask to see a slab of sinter they will look at you like you have three heads, so play along and call it onyx. Sometimes, knowing something and keeping it to yourself can be really satisfying.

Sinter, or commercial onyx is formed from calcite in a way similar to how travertine is formed. Water dissolves calcite from limestone to the point of saturation and what precipitates out of that solution will form either sinter or travertine depending on a couple of factors. If there are air bubbles present at the time that the calcite gets deposited then the resulting stone will be travertine. If there are no air bubbles, then the resulting stone will be sinter, or commercial onyx.

If you've ever been in a cave, the stalactites and stalagmites are made from calcite and if left to form large enough deposits, they may end up as a vanity counter several thousand years in the future.

What this means too is that this material is a sedimentary rock. Of the three types of rock (igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary), sedimentaries are almost always the most fragile and commercial onyx is no exception. It can't handle everyday stresses and it is very easy to chip and crack. People who don't know any better sell this stuff as real, silicaceous onyx. If it were silica-based, it would wear a lot better than this material actually does. Keep in mind that it is as high maintenance as travertine. I think travertine's gorgeous, it's my favorite flooring material. But I wouldn't put it on a counter if you put a gun to my head.

It can't handle heavy traffic or exposure to acids. It's extremely porous and makes a pretty lousy kitchen surface. Besides, most of it is supremely busy and a little of it goes a long way. In the bathroom pictured above, it looks interesting without being overwhelming. But just barely.

In the kitchen above it looks like the scene of a grisly murder or a slaughterhouse. Seriously, it looks like these people have a meat back splash. Ugh. This material is very expensive and as the kitchen above illustrates beautifully, expensive doesn't always mean tasteful.

The less garish form shown on the tub surround above is usually called honey onyx. I've used the same material as a desk top in an office and it looked interesting without being too too. Get up close and personal to a slab of the material pictured above some time if you get the chance. It's really interesting. It looks like half crystallized caramel. It's a little too wild for my tastes, but I can't walk past it without stopping. Sometimes, stuff that comes out of the ground is just jaw dropping.

The Bailout explained

Paddy Hirsch, senior editor of NPR's Marketplace, released another video that explains the bailout in easy to follow terms. He explains what's happening in the financial markets, what the Fed and the Treasury's plan is to fix it and what's at stake. Brilliant!

The credit crisis as Antarctic expedition from Marketplace on Vimeo.

Marble and the metamorphics

That sounds like the name of a Do-Wop band. So since I touched on igneous rocks in general and granite in particular yesterday, today I want to talk about the metamorphics.

My diagram above shows sedimentary rocks on a sea floor being subducted under a tectonic plate. That sedimentary rock will turn into metamorphic rock given enough time, enough heat and enough pressure. So what was once sediment on the bottom of the sea turns into metamorphic rock as it gets pushed down into the slow cooker that sits directly below our feet. If it doesn't run into anything, it will turn into an igneous rock eventually. But then I wouldn't have anything to write about.

So in our case, the now metamorphic rock is going to run into another continental plate and instead of continuing its long journey down, it's going to be thrust upward like in this diagram.

The blue section in this diagram shows how metamorphic rocks end up back on the surface of the earth after their time spent below ground. That blue section is how we get three common metamorphic rocks used in homes: marble, quartzite, soapstone and a fourth, mysterious stone called serpentinite. I'm going to write a post on soapstone later, so for now I'm going to concentrate on marble, quartzite and serpentinite.

Everybody knows what marble is but what a lot of people don't know is that it used to be limestone, a sedimentary rock. So even though the chemistry of the original limestone and the resulting marble are identical, their molecular structures are different thanks to time spent in the depths of the earth. The same thing happens to turn sandstone into quartzite. Serpentinite is another metamorphic rock that's usually mislabeled as marble (Rainforest Green and Rainforest Brown are examples of serpentinite). Serpentinite starts out as ultramafic rock in the mantle of the earth that gets thrust upward. Serpentinite never spent any time at the surface of the earth and it isn't a transformed sedimentary rock. It's instead the transformed, formerly molten core of the earth.

OK, real life example time.

Here's a slab of Carrera marble. It's a pretty common stone so far as marbles go and most of it starts at around $60 a square foot when it's being made into a kitchen counter. It's composed of calcium carbonate and other minerals and that's what makes it softer and less stain resistant than granite. Despite what everyone claims are its negatives, I'd be safe in saying that it's my favorite counter top material. It's a classic, it holds a temperature perfectly, it looks great and 11 million Italian families can't be wrong. Embrace the stains people.

So here it is in a traditional kitchen. The subway tile on the back wall is also made from Carrera in this kitchen. In life, this is a gorgeous kitchen in a nearly timeless style.

Carrera also looks great in a modern setting. The William Ohs kitchen shown above proves that pretty well.

Marble can also be black with white veins of silica in it and that's stunning in its own right. Although at the end of the day, I think that white marble's easier to work with aesthetically.

This is a piece of white quartzite my client fell in love with last week. White quartzite often gets mislabeled as marble, but they are very different stones. Marble is composed of calcium carbonate and quartzite is composed of silica. The two stones behave very differently. As silica, quartzite will be harder and less prone to staining than marble will. If you look at quartzite up closely, you can see that it has a grainier appearance than marble does. That's from its once having been sandstone.

Quartzite usually has some bright colors in it on a white background. When it looks like this it's often mislabeled as granite and that's unfortunate because it's not granite. Quartzite is more porous than granite is despite their being made from the same elements essentially.

This is a quartzite from Brazil that's always mislabeled and sold as a granite. It's usually called Blue Louise and it is an eyeful. Again, it's beautiful as a piece of stone but as Tim Gunn would say, it's a lot of look. Proceed with caution.

The other big difference between quartzite, marble, serpentinite and granite is the price. Quartzite and serpentinite are always wickedly expensive whether they're labeled properly or not. Marble and granite tend to be more affordable.

Finally, the slab of stone above is always labeled as a marble and it's usually called Rainforest Brown or Rainforest Green. It's not a marble though, it's a serpentinite that's been pushed up from the very bowels of the earth. It's made from a veritable soup of elements ranging from manganese, cobalt, nickel, iron and silica. Even though it's sold as a marble, it's a lot more resilient than marble is and it's usually harder. These stones are great to use in bathrooms, but I wouldn't want to prepare food on them in a kitchen owing to their toxic mineral content.

Granted, the amounts of cobalt, chromium and the rest of them are trace amounts; but I'd like to keep my cobalt intake down to zero thank you.

So there's my run through of some common metamorphic rocks. Tune in tomorrow when I tackle the sedimentary rocks people welcome into their homes.