Kitchen Sinks: Slate Surfaces Rock for Strength and Style

twoxtwo Love the look of it and it's so different which I love! You always see the porcelain farm house sinks which are lovely but this takes it a step further in uniqueness and durability!!

Tile-Stones Glad to see that slate is getting more recognition for the great resource that it is! Our slate tiles are beginning to get more and more popular.. People are starting to realize all of the benefits!

wantsideas Love the look of slate but not sold on the farmhouse style sink.

Rough Linen I love my FireSlate counter, like the stuff they used in old chem. labs.

the_misfit Huh...are you sure most of those sinks aren't actually soapstone? Especially the first couple.

bkdale Love the DeSilva carved aproned sink. I have black Baslat Slate(Formica) and a black granit/slate sink from H. Depot. I could not afford a slate aproned sink so, I plan on faux finish and carve a board to fit under the sink where there use to be two unuseable drawers. I've done this before using a drumel tool. No it's not as beautiful as what is shown but NOT bad either. Love the New England country look.

helloktgrrl This is great information! I have slate tiles in my shower and have been worried about how to clean it and whether it would stain. Now, I only have to worry about the grout!

housegroupie Have to agree with wantsideas - My first thought when I saw a farmhouse sink was "industrial laundry room" - and I've never really gotten past that first impression.

Mackin Drafting & Design I love the look myself. I've seen them done in soapstone as well. It's something that you have to like though because it's not something you can just pull out and replace on a whim.

wandm I give it thumbs up. I have had both porcelain and stainless sinks...most people don't like the looks of stainless but my porcelain sink has nicks and scratches which I can't stand. I want to replace the sink and this seems like a great solution. I'm glad I saw this article!

Miles Blaine I'm slowly gathering ideas about the details I'm going to have in my future home and a custom slate sink officially on the list.

sjmom Something to consider and file away for the future.

quilterski who sells them near Syracuse, NY???

Mary Duddles Any idea where to get a slate sink and countertops in central florida?

gillianne I'm a fan of slate for countertops, backsplashes, floors, and tub surrounds (all of which we have in grey-green slate from a local quarry). I appreciate the texture and durability for those applications. Aesthetically, I'm less enthusiastic about slate for kitchen sinks. Purely a matter of personal taste. But for other uses, I sing its praises. It works with traditional, transitional, and clean-lined modern looks.

halleycomet We live in the only area famous for RED SLATE (Granville NY) and see slate roofing that has weathered 200 years of storms; massive snow; acid rain. I am an amateur genealogist and I see hundreds of gravestones every time I venture into a burial ground; the ones that have LASTED are almost always the slate ones which are still as crisp and clear as the day they were carved. And we had--in a house built in the 1600's in NJ--massive laundry sinks made of--slate. They too looked amazing for their age--which I would say was less than the house age but well over 100 years at the time.

While I am not a fan of the more modern ways of carving these--the router look---I would give a LOT for a slate--anything! Sink tub laundry---tiles--the only thing I have seen that would not come off of them was iodine spilled on UNSEALED floor slate slabs. And even that wore off over time. For about 100 years around here we had large slabs of slate as sidewalks. Some bright municipal worker got the idea to do away with these in favor of--shudders--concrete. The slates had held up beautifully. I am lucky enough to have rescued some red ones. The concrete? Not so much! Slates will lift up over tree roots--so you can trim the root or move the stone. Concrete--just shatters.

Every once in a while I will see a house--usually a very old house---with just the old slate slabs for a step. They always make me smile.

I actually spoke to a tomb stone cutter about a design they had in a show area--a 3-D motorcycle-and discovered that for a nearly life size bike--with lettering and installed--it was only $1100.00. So---yeah these things CAN be expensive--but it depends on where you shop and how costly your design is too. I had thought for that size of stone and the work on it plus the base etc it would cost many times that. Go see your local quarry too--it is always possible that they have items in stock or that they know who does good work or that they can come up with something for you rather than going to "specialty" places. A sink--is pretty much--a box. With a hole in it. After that---well--thats the plumbers job!

chiwara I can work with the look. I am concerned about long term durability. I dislike that sinks have to be replaced because they become to scuffed, pitted, and/or stained to be sanitary anymore. Can a slate sink be maintained or refurbished to last a lifetime? I am redoing my kitchen now and would like a sink that never had to be replaced. It seems like slate might be the answer.

halleycomet I would suspect that like anything else you would need to take SOME care--like--not dropping heavy rocks into the sink! But that would apply for any sink! The slate should hold up forever. This is a VERY dense rock--not the kind with easily seperated "layers" that some think of as "slate" but is probably more accurately shale. This has a very tight "grain" and altho without a sealer of some sort might get some marks it would--like Corian etc--be easy to just polish those out with fine wet/dry sandpaper. The sidewalks around here made of slate are still gorgeous after a hundred years of being walked and drivevn on--and since we live where there is a LOT of snow and sub-freezing weather these have been shoveled and snow-blown and STILL look fresh. Of course if you dragged something over the stone that cut THRU the top layer that would make a mark. But in a sink--I doubt it.

I would contact some place that deals with this--a local quarry or stone seller yard--or google up Granville and Hampton NY or Pawlet VT for slate quarry dealers. The freight from here might be a consideration but you have to factor ALL of the costs in. And you might find dealers much closer to you! I do know that our local quarries ship all over the place and some do fabrication.

The slate laundry sinks in our old house functioned as both fabric care and slop sinks with metal buckets and metal edged mops and chemicals in them--our basement flooded several times a year!-- and we had a workshop and an artists studio there---and I never noticed any damage. I don't know how the edges are treated to join or seal or if these go in an outside "box" frame these days--ours were seemingly just large slate slabs with some form of cement or maybe epoxy at the edges. They did have legs and weighed I am sure several hundred pounds--but they were also about 6 FEET long and DEEP--you could easily have bathed in them. What I wouldn't give for them NOW!!!!

sharpmama I really love slate and am surprised it hasn't gotten much attention as it deserves. I hope to use it or maybe soapstone for my counters and maybe the sink, too. Neither is easily available in So California, at least at a first, though casual, glance.

I'm sure most of my friends must think I'm nuts... so many are still ga-ga over granite.

To Halley-
My husband and I moved here from NYC, where we bought a house in an old neighborhood in an outer borough of the City. During our house hunt, we saw a few slate roofed houses; unfortunately, none met our needs for other reasons. I also spend a Christmas vacation at a cabin in a ski resort town a few years back. The cabin had tons of slate floors as well as a couple of shower walls using slate. It was a love fest!

halleycomet There are slate roofed houses in the Bergen Country/ Greater NYC area but they are few and far between--mostly Victorian with the slate cut in intricate patterns. These were a high point of slate working. The scalloped edges are beautiful and have a great "shadow line"--around here it is not at all uncommon to see scallops; intricate over laying patterns of rectangles; diamonds; bands of different colors and of course---the date the house or barn was built worked into the roof! OF late there has been a "revival" of this which I love to see. It's not a cheap roof unless you manage to re-cycle it--and there are plenty of slate guys here that will BUY used slates!---but it will last FOREVER.


If you strip a barn or a house you can re-hang with special slate nails. IF a slate breaks and needs to be replaced you use a "Slate Hammer" which looks like a long spatula with a shaped end --this hooks the old nails and you can then rap on the offset handle to cut the nail off. Then you use a slate "Hook"--basically a long "S" hook--to hook over the top of the old slate in the next row and under the outer edge of the replacement slate. Done! IT takes longer to fetch the ladder and the slate tool than to do the actual repair. We had to re-hang a roof when a higher overhang shed it's ice and snow and broke a bunch of the slates on the lower level--we learned how to do the entire job in an afternoon. And there is NOTHING like the sound of rain or hail on slate!

Some slate roofs outlast the boards they are nailed to and you then have to strip them off and re-do. But if you get another 40 or 50 YEARS out of them---

And they look NOTHING like the "Faux Slate" roofing sold at the home center. Too thick; edges are all wrong; the colors are all wrong--nope.

I haven't had a slate roof for 24 years--sigh!--but I still have my antique slate hammer hanging on the wall.

katrinacd I think the texture of slate would get to me vs. porcelain. Slate like a chalkboard?

halleycomet Slate has many textures but I suppose the finish for sinks and countertops could best be compared to a slightly "softer" feel than lab tops---the tops we had in Chem---or a silkier feel than granite--not so "cold" and glassy feeling. I think they "hone" or polish the stone to order. So that would depend on the composition and color of the stone. More like a somewhat harder soapstone--also a very nice material for kitchens and baths! I would go to your local stone yard or home center and look at slate "tiles" to see if you like that and get an idea for colors and texture. You might be able to get a few and bring them home to see what you might like in your light and with your fittings.

cluelessintheyard Thanks, Rachel Grace for showing the versatility of this stone with such varied kitchen styles. A beautiful and practical material.