Reader question: Where do I look at granite slabs?

Help! I'm renovating my kitchen and want to put in natural stone (Granite or marble) countertops. Can you give me the name of a supplier who has full slabs that I can go and look at? 

I want to be able to pick my own slab and have that turned into my countertop.

Hmmm. You didn't tell me where you are so I can't recommend anyone. But if I were you, I'd do a Google search using terms like "granite fabricator + [my town]." The addition sign isn't needed any more but old habits die hard. Your instinct to look at slabs of stone before you buy anything is the correct one though.

Wanting to look at slabs is a good idea, but it's more than just a good idea. It should be the standard operating procedure of every vendor involved in your kitchen renovation. Never buy a natural stone anything from someone who won't let you look at full slabs. I don't care how tight and repetitive the granite pattern in question is, natural stone needs to be seen as full slabs. All natural stone has color variations and some of them are hugely consequential. It is impossible to get a feel for what granite looks like from a small sample. The same goes for marble, quartzite, gabbro, serpentinite, limestone, sandstone, travertine, sinter or any other dimensional stone.

I have boxes full of 4-inch by 4-inch granite and marble samples, but I use them to put palettes together. As in, "here's your cabinet wood and color, your floor tile, your wall tile, your wall colors and your granite color." I'm using those granite samples to illustrate colors, not to make decisions about patterns.

If you're renovating your kitchen, a really smart first step would be to talk to a kitchen designer. When you're interviewing the designer,  make sure that he or she is planning a field trip to a stone yard as part of the process of putting a design together for you. Any kitchen designer worth his salt has a relationship with a stone fabricator already. He or she should be willing to use that relationship to educate you first-hand about your counter options. That can only be done in a stone yard.

Scattered throughout this post are a bunch of granite samples. They are similar to the size samples that home centers use to sell granite counters. This borders on criminal activity and here's why. All of these samples are close ups cut from the slab below.

Imagine falling in love with the first or second samples only to have the slab up there show up after you've already spent several thousand dollars. Oy!

Italian earthquake relief

By now, everyone's pretty aware that a major earthquake struck the Abruzzo region of Italy yesterday. The quake struck in the middle of the night and its epicenter was the medieval fortress town of L'Aquila, but 28 villages surrounding L'Aquila were also deeply affected. So far, more than 200 people have lost their lives and upwards of 50,000 people have been left homeless. This is a tragedy in every sense of the word. If you're moved to make a donation to help out, you can do so through the National Italian American Foundation if you're in the US. The NIAF is a highly reputable organization and they've set up a special section on their website for donations to Abruzzo relief efforts. If you're in Europe or elsewhere in the world, you can make a donation to the Italian Red Cross directly.

NIAF Abruzzo Relief Fund

Croce Rossa Italiana

Sonoma Cast Stone: concrete sinks and counters that are beautiful and practical

I wrote about Sonoma Forge's beautiful faucets yesterday, but premium faucets are only a small part of the story. Sonoma Forge grew out of an older company, Sonoma Cast Stone. Sonoma Cast Stone has been manufacturing one-of-a-kind sinks, counters, tiles, pavers, bathtubs and more for the last 14 years. Sonoma Cast Stone makes some beautiful things and in looking over their offerings, the aesthetic sensibilities of Sonoma Forge make perfect sense. The two companies make perfectly complimentary products.

Sonoma Cast Stone casts their sinks, tubs, counters, tiles and fireplace surrounds from a sustainable concrete they developed and trademarked as Earthcrete™. Earthcrete™ is a concrete formulation that uses 21% recycled content and 60% less Portland cement than traditional concrete. These reduced percentages make for a stronger and lighter material and it allows Sonoma Cast Stone to make counters and other shapes without steel rebar. 

Earthcrete™ is available in three forms: NuCrete™, Classic Concrete and Mold Release. 

NuCrete™ is a stainless and impermeable form of concrete. Sonoma Cast Stone developed it themselves to be stain proof and non-reactive yet still look like concrete. NuCrete™ is not just sealed concrete and that's a very good thing. Anyone who's lived with so-called sealed concrete will tell you that sealed concrete is an oxymoron. NuCrete™ is stain proof the whole way through, so there's no finish or top coat to wear down or damage.

Classic Concrete is just what it sounds like, traditional-looking concrete though it's still made from Sonoma Cast Stone's Earthcrete™. Classic Concrete is sealed and waxed in the traditional way and it will develop the same patina regular concrete will. That it's made from Earthcrete™ will make it lighter and stronger than what you'd find using conventional concrete.

Finally, Mold Release Earthcrete™ is an unfinished product that's sold straight from the mold, as the name suggests. Mold Release is most often used for tiles, pavers and fireplace surrounds.

So that's the technical side of these products, in looking over the images I've included in this post I'm completely taken with how they look. Their sinks are beautiful and I lack enough superlatives to gush over the two-tone counter and apron-front sink shown above.

Man, this stuff's beautiful. Look through their website and their company portfolio. Unique to the concrete counter and sink sites I've seen, Sonoma Cast Stone's products can be used in a variety of styles. There are traditional and modern, Eastern and Western kitchens and baths show on their site.

Concrete's an inherently flexible material and it's a pleasure to find a company who really knows how to run with that flexibility. Keep them in mind if you're interested in using concrete in an upcoming project.

All images © Sonoma Cast Stone and used with permission.

Gorgeous faucets from Sonoma Forge

I mentioned Susan Palmer's Design Blog the other day, and last week they profiled some faucets from Sonoma Forge that stopped me cold. Sonoma Forge is a Petaluma, CA-based manufacturer of some truly beautiful fixtures.

Their fixtures are available in a variety of finishes; from Oil-Rubbed Bronze, to Rustic Copper, from Rustic Nickel to Hand-Forged Brass. Of their finishes, Rustic Copper is the only one Sonoma considers to be a living finish. Technically not a living finish, Rustic Nickel will also evolve over time if placed outside, though nickel's not nearly so reactive a metal as copper. I wrote about living finishes in a series of posts back in February. If you need a refresher, you'll find the first in that series here.

I corresponded a bit with Erik Ambjor, Sonoma's president last week. He gave me that information on the nature of their finishes. Another aspect to some of Sonoma's fixtures is a handle-free operation they call Sans Hands, and I had Erik explain that to me too.

Sans Hands technology allows some of Sonoma's fixtures to operate without handles of any type. Rather than the hit-or-miss nature of electric eye and motion-detecting fixtures, Sonoma's Sans Hands operates invisibly. It sounds really complicated and high-tech but it's pretty simple. The faucet generates a small electro-magnetic field, hands near the field interrupt it and the faucet turns on. Pull your hands away and the field's re-established and the faucet turn off. It's pretty slick actually. All of that happens automatically and Sans Hands faucets look like they work by magic alone.

In addition to being thought through and engineered with something that borders on genius, they are also gorgeous. Some of them take a page from the traditional cut bamboo water spouts, some interpret classic American forms, some are sleek and timeless and some are art for art's sake.

Spend some time on their website, you'll be as mesmerized as I was. Thinking about something new and interesting for an upcoming renovation? Sonoma's faucets and fixtures are available through dealers located across the US and Canada. You can find a dealer who's local to you through their website. That is, if you can tear yourself away from the product photography. Hah! Notice too that a lot of these photos I'm showing today have some really cool-looking sinks along with them. Well Sonoma Forge gets involved in cast concrete sinks and counters too. Tune in tomorrow to read all about them.

And speaking of vacations

Check it out. The kids at Google Maps have been busy, and I mean busy, expanding their Street View function to more and more of the world. I got clued in to this latest expansion by Scintilla at Bell'Avventura who mentioned that Positano had made it onto the list of places with Street Views.

Huge swaths of Europe are included now but I homed right in on Italy. I'm amazed by this technology. Do yourself a favor and head over to Google Maps and then drop the little yellow guy anywhere you'd like to get a pedestrian's view. Once it's activated, you can pan up and down and turn a whole 360 degrees. Try it!

Here's how the Villa Terrazza looks from the road down to the Marina Picola in Sorrento. My friends and I rented a floor of that villa less than a year ago. Astounding! I cannot get over how clear these screen captures are.

Here's the view of the Villa Terrazza from the Marina Piccola itself. Wow. I feel like I'm back there.

The "Farmashop" on the left side of this screen capture was where I had to go explain to a Pharmacist that I had developed athlete's foot from traipsing around southern Italy in wet hiking boots. It was the ultimate test of my conversational Italian skills, not to mention my ability to use my iron will where my language skills fall short. Yet there it is on my laptop. It's like I'm there again. "I funghi sono in pedi!" I'm shouting that at my laptop as I write this. That's not a very grammatical Italian sentence, but it made the necessary point --I have fungus on my feet.

This is the coastal road between Sorrento and Positano. You and work your way over to the wall and look down into the abyss. What's a safety rail anyway?

It's a virtual vacation. Google Maps can take you all through Naples, most of the way down the Amalfi Coast, up to Rome, Florence, Perugia, Livorno, Bologna, Milan, Genoa, etc. If you're not in the mood for an Italian get away, You can stroll the streets of Marseille or Paris. How about Madrid or Amsterdam? London's in there now as are most of the cities in Japan. Mapping the world like this is an ambitious project and leave it up to Google to undertake it in the first place. Leave it up to Google too to make is so smart and accessible.