DesignTies: Natural Stone

April 3, 2009

Hooked on… Natural Stone!

DesignTies is participating in Hooked on Fridays, a weekly blog-party event hosted by Julia from Hooked on Houses.

I’m HOOKED…

…and in love with natural stone. Granite, marble, limestone, soapstone, slate… it’s all beautiful to me!!

I had always been drawn to the beauty of natural stone, but my love affair began with my first visit to Atlas Stone Products (C&S Group). We had renovated pretty much every room in our previous home (see some transformations here and here) but nothing had been done to our master bathroom. It was still stuck in the 80s! Problem… we were getting ready to sell the place so we didn’t want to spend too much money or do too much work, but something had to be done to bring the standard of this room up to that of the others in our condo. Our solution = replace the dated sink and counter with granite and a vessel sink (we did a little more then this, but that’s a tale for another post!).

Off we went to Atlas Stone in search of a piece of granite, starting our search in the fantasy-land warehouse…

WOW!

We soon learned that these slabs were very large and more then we would need, so we made our way outside to look at the remnants… and found a fabulous partial slab of Blue Pearl. The colour was a perfect tie-in for our blue bedroom and we were able to purchase the slab for $125!! We were also able to get it cut and installed (along with a piece for a shelf in the bathtub area) for a reasonable fee, too. What a fantastic result!!

After my first visit to the stone warehouse I couldn’t wait to go again. And go I did when choosing a granite for our current kitchen. I loved every moment of the trip and took tons of photos. Here… take a look:

Aren’t the granites to die for?!

And two of my favourites… limestone (can you see the fossils?) and soapstone

Again… WOW!!

But what stone did I choose on for our kitchen?

Here are photos of the stones I was considering…

Let me tell you… it was a hard decision! It was funny; I went there in search of something like Ornamental but when I saw it I discovered that – while a lovely piece of stone – the contrast between light and dark in its pattern wasn’t what I was looking for. It came down to Crema San Marco, Giallo Veneziano and Golden Typhoon, three granites with similar tones but with different patterns = GT had the most “graining”, GV was more spotted while CSM’s graining was more subtle.

Do I sound a little like Goldilocks as she inspected her three choices?!

I chose Crema San Marco – a stunning granite with beautiful markings! Without revealing too much of my kitchen (I haven’t posted about it yet!), here’s a photo of my counter. I love it!!

I’m so HOOKED on Natural Stone!

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m CRAZY about quartz, too and I think solid surfaces like Corian are FAB. I also have nothing against a great laminate counter – there are some terrific colours and styles, some looking exactly like natural stone. Laminate has come a long way! I used a quartz product in my condo kitchen called Silestone that I thought was the bomb (here’s that link again). I’d use it again in a heart-beat.

But Natural Stone!!

Here are some more photos I found that showcase the use of natural stone in a variety of surfaces, sinks and other great things! Click on the photo to make your way to its source.