Our Italian tile and granite guy, Dino, came over this morning to measure the kitchen cabinet surface so we can finally get our order sent out to Italy….once we decide what to do on the wall behind the counters…which I will discuss later. Dino brought a contractor friend of his along who more or less seems to be his sidekick and he will be installing the counter top for us as well. We originally were going to have Macky do it because Dino generally doesn’t volunteer people to do the installation but I feel much happier with the new contractor doing it since he seems to work with granite all the time. Listening to him while he was there today, talking about what would need to be done and all that made me very comfortable that he knows what he’s doing and Dino has assured us that the fee will be quite minimal. In fact, Dino was saying before he left that he wishes he could normally make €150 a day for something like installation…so that sounds promising for us since it will not be a quick and easy job.
His contractor friend we’ve met briefly before at Dino’s showroom because he was sort of hanging out there one morning when we dropped by. He’s also Italian and the two of them together is just great. They’re both probably about 60 and during the measuring process, they were just bantering back and forth with each other. Most of it was in German but at the end they started sticking to Italian which I found to be completely amusing. I didn’t understand much aside from a few numbers since it’s close to Spanish (which studied in high school and then promptly forgot most of it – doh!) but they were still completely entertaining.
Dino was actually not too thrilled about coming out here to take the measurements because our house is about 50 km from his store (31 miles). To us this is not a huge distance but apparently for him it was almost too far because he complained a lot about it on the phone to hubby, saying it would cut into his margins (I don’t understand either but I guess his time is very valuable as well) and he basically put it off until we kept pestering him. If he didn’t want the order we would have found someone else…all he had to say was “get lost.” But we bought the tile for our kitchen and bathroom from him and he made us a really good deal since the original order for them had been canceled (so we therefore helped him out as well) and we figured if he wanted the order, great.
We wanted to measure everything ourselves but it turns out that we need to actually cut a piece of cardboard or use paper to make a template of the counters. This is then sent to Italy and they cut it according to the outline you sent in. So that means if we screw anything up with the measuring process and it’s ever so slightly wrong, we’re screwed…and we’re not so excited about spending €1500 for a few pieces of granite that won’t actually fit our cabinets. I gathered while they were measuring everything that the granite company will actually cut their own template in the end and just use your measurements – so I guess we could have handled this ourselves – but I do feel much happier that Dino was here and has assessed the situation himself since he is the expert.
The problem area for us was obviously not the island, which is very simple, but was actually the cabinets on either side of the sink. We bought a massive farmhouse style sink from IKEA called Domsjö and there is a groove under the sink where the counter needs to fit into which will help to support the sink. There is also a funky corner at the front which we would have needed to cut out to get the right length of the counter but we weren’t really sure what the usual procedure was. The guys have informed me that they will actually have to make this cut themselves when the counter is being installed because it will need to be dead on and their measurements are not necessarily perfect. So I guess we could have actually done the measurements ourselves but I feel much safer knowing they have done them.
One thing we probably wouldn’t have arrived at is that the counter should be even with the basin of the sink. We figured 2 cm depth is norm and that would work fine…and as I type this I have to think about that monkey at the other granite place who didn’t want to sell us granite deeper than 60 cm. But the basin comes out 4 cm so the flow would probably be a bit strange at only 2.
And then there is the complication about our stove top. It’s almost 4 cm thick but the counter we were going to order would be 3 cm. So this means it would either have to hang down into the drawer below a tiny bit which the drawer should still be able to clear…or we’d need to make the counter on the island 4 cm thick…which most likely means using two pieces of 2 cm thick granite glued together versus 4 cm which will be insanely expensive. And the guys believe the hole we cut for the stove top is also too big although we were just following the instructions that came with it from IKEA. The final decision they came to? Take the range with them and figure out the hole size and depth from the office. Fine by me – not like we can actually use the range at the moment anyway.
We decided on the color called Paradiso Bash for the granite. You can see it in the image below. The amount of black varies and there is a tad more of a pinkish tone than you can tell in the photo but we had a sample in our old kitchen laying on our dining table for a long while (it’s the same wood as our kitchen) and we really liked it so we’re still thinking it should look fabulous. Our other consideration was a nearly all black granite but we figured that in the end it would probably be a bit too dark. Unfortunately I never took a photo of the various choices when we were considering them at the rental house…but oh well.
So now we have a decision to make about what we will do on the wall behind the counter. We could leave it just regular wall but there is the complication of keeping it clean should anything splash on the wall. If we leave bare wall, then we will have a 10 cm piece of trim along the bottom. But behind the sink we should really put something up since water constantly splashes up there while washing things in the sink. So then the question is put a piece of granite on the wall behind the sink that matches the counters? Or just put some tile up there? And what is going to look right? Or should we just put granite on the entire wall?? And what would all this cost us in the end?
We learned during our venture with the floor tiles that the border can often end up being more expensive than doing the full wall so perhaps that will be the case here. We have to call Dino tomorrow to let him know what our decision is for the wall so maybe he will have worked up some estimates for us already regarding the cost.
While I do think it would look really nice with all granite back there, I’m just not sure. I wish we had thought to have him bring the granite sample with him but we didn’t think about it. I stuck a few pieces of cardboard to the wall to help us imagine what it would look like if we just did the piece of granite in the middle with the border around the rest (see the photo below). But I really have no clue at the moment what I will like the most. Somehow it just doesn’t seem right. The full wall with granite would probably be beautiful but since our upper cabinets aren’t quite as long as the lower ones (on the side by the door)…well that could also look strange. Tonight we will be spending a lot of time considering our options and hopefully reach some sort of useful conclusion. And then when we hear the price, we might make another conclusion lol. Any input as to your own thoughts??
