"Realistic" as in "looks like natural stone"? Not a chance. Realistic as in looks like recycled glass in concrete? Yeah, that it does. Now, it's subjective as to whether or not you actually like that look. I happen to understand and enjoy a modern aesthetic and I think it can look at home in a modern type kitchen. Even a transitional one. Not a chance in a traditional one. Not sure what elements in a "modern farmhouse" are going to be modern, but it might work there, depending on your mission statement.

Now as to whether or not it's a durable enough surface to work hard in a kitchen, there is some controversy. The cement portion of the counter is porous and will need sealing or it will absorbs stains. Even sealing it won't prevent etching though. The glass is a bit fragile and tends to chip on hard used edges. There have been a couple of posters very unhappy with it and I believe even one who replaced it. That's an expensive mistake to make, so definately get plenty of samples and use them well to see if they hold up to your standards.

Thanks, live wire oak. I appreciate the honest feedback. Realistic wasn't the right word...more like affordable/durable/desirable. Trying to get a broad perspective. Vetrazzo looks gorgeous to me. I believe it is expensive, but don't have a quote yet. I wonder about durability and it sounds like there are issues. I've seen it in restaurants and hoped it would hold up well. You make a good point about the aesthetics. My husband and I are attracted to modern styles but like to soften them a bit. Say, add more warm wood tones and aim for casual, comfortable furniture. We are not designers and I clip ideas like crazy. Do we have a mission statement? No, we've been all over the map. We need to work on that. Thanks.

This thread links to some information about different types of counters and how they wear. Might be useful if you're still considering what counter material to use.

Here is a link that might be useful: Counter materials discussion w/Pioneer Woman

My local Whole Foods Grocery has Vetrazzo in the cafe and in the restrooms. It's gorgeous. In terms of staining, I think that if you choose one of the ones "with patina" it really won't show up. From what I understand you do need to steal it, just like you would concrete. I'd think it would be a bit easier than concrete, though, since a lot of the surface is glass which won't stain.

I love the stuff, and if we were proceeding with my vision of the kitchen, I'd use it. But I just can't see it going with my husband's preferred cherry cabs.

It is at the high end of the market. In line with some of the top end granites as far as cost. Ice Stone would be another alternative, which is also at the higher end. If the kitchen is going to get hard use, I would suggest a different product, if its a light use the Vetrazzo will be fine.

There's a whole BUNCH of products that are available - the only downer right
now is the cost. Man of the "recycled glass & cement" type products are not
really inexpensive to produce - so the cost is many time higher than traditional
Granites, Solid Surface,, Laminates and other more commonly used products.

The other issue right now is LEED certification which dictates that a product -
for it to be considered truly "GREEEN" - has distance considerations tacked on
to the amount of post consumer waste that goes into making the product.

I am NOT A LEEDS expert - I'm just a "Fab-Ri-Mi-Cator" and I
have an interest for using and doing things "green" - but I can tell you that one of the
parts of the LEED components is something to the effect that a product has to
be produced within 500 miles of it's final use point - so this means that the
recycled countertops would have to be MADE at their factory - something like
within 500 miles of Wisconsin and your farmhouse.... I don't know
of anything
closer than Enviroglass in Plano Texas - but there's new companies popping up
every week, so there may be one near you in Wosconsin...

Where about in Wisconsin are you???

let us know

kevin

I don't know if you would even consider this, but I will throw it out there...

I recently saw Meganite's new color line and they have a number of colors that look a bit like the Ice Stone. I am sure it is less expensive. It is a solid surface material, like Corian - not sure if you would want that - but at least it is another alternative to check out.

The "shell" is a mother of pearl look acrylic

The colors that have the translucent aggregate are:
Barney's Rubble 903 (great name!) - gray, looks like glass in concrete
Picnic in the Park 415 - green
Moon River 413 - blue
Surfin' Safari 419 - tan w/ green and brown aggregate
Make Me Blush 417 - peachy w/ peachy aggregate and "shells"
Beyond the Sea 416 - yellowy sand w/peachy aggregate and "shells"
See Glass 418 - greeny tan w/ blue, green, and brown aggregate and some "shells"
Dancing With the Stars 414 - cream w/ light blue, yellow and tan aggregate and "shells"

Here is a link that might be useful: Meganite website

Chicagoans--The Pioneer Woman blog has great real-life info about countertops. I can see that concrete may require some care. Inspired by the amazing lodge, I'm wondering about using it in part of our kitchen/island. Thank you.

Cawaps--I love the look of vetrazzo too. It has stopped me in my tracks at local restaurants. Never boring. I'm brainstorming about cabinets that compliment the vetrazzo. But it's not widely appealing like granite. I get the feeling that it looks like an expensive waste product to some people. I need to keep that in mind so I don't go crazy.

tom999--thank you. I'll check out Ice Stone. I'm wondering about using one of these products in the homework and coffee sipping part of the kitchen.

Kevin--we are about an hour north of Milwaukee. The green issue is troubling. Like everywhere else, we've got trucks hauling away our beer bottles for recycle (this is Wisconsin) and cement manufacturers down the road. It would be nice to create this kind of product locally...

Latimore---I'll look at meganite again. The examples I've seen weren't as dramatic as vetrazzo but there is a limit to our budget. I also read a couple of complaints on the internet that talked about easy and deep scratching. Have you used it?

Many thanks for the feedback!

I love vetrazzo and wanted to use it in our remodel somewhere. I stopped at a Neil Kelly showroom to get a good look at it and just loved it even more, but the design consultant advised against it for a kitchen. She said it isn't durable enough. Then we considered it for our bathroom but once we found out how expensive it was we nixed that idea as well. Instead we found a Chroma quartz that has some similar qualities for much less. We learned quickly that if you it says 'GREEN' or 'RECYCLED' expect to pay top dollar.

As far as competing brands. Yes! There are quite a few... E IceStone, EnviroGlass, and Eco by Cosentino come to mind. They are all similar cost. We found an onyx remnant for our bathroom counter for half the price of the recycled glass.

I was born and raised in Milwaukee - spent a number of years living in
New Berlin - until I moved my family out here to Arizona in 1992.

Locally produced products are on the horizon... but not just yet...

Where up north are you?

Full disclosure I am here writing from Vetrazzo, but not as a promotional move, just to answer some questions I saw on this posting. If you disagree with anything I say here please keep the discussion going and I will check back to answer any further questions or admit when I am wrong. I am not asking you to go to our website, this is your forum with your experiences creating the content. This is just my experience here to provide details.

A. It is true that one's opinion of what is a traditional look is subjective. That's why Vetrazzo came out with 6 subdued, monochromatic colors that have less sparkle and mixture of color than the rest of the line. Vetrazzo was featured on the cover of "This Old House Magazine", so with the right cabinet and paint selection a Vetrazzo fan can find a way to use it in a traditional home.

B. Its durability: Vetrazzo is heat rated to 600 degrees because it is made with only cement and glass, not a petroleum resin binder that will melt, warp or discolor at a heat of 340 degrees or more. Cement as a binder is also much harder than the resin binders. This means Vetrazzo will out preform any material made with a resin matrix in the areas of scratch and heat resistance.

C. Stainability: A number of you addressed this and are correct, cement is slightly porous, but the glass is not. Vetrazzo is 83% glass so the math is easy on this one. Yes you need to seal it once a year, but it only takes 35 minutes a year to maintain your Vetrazzo countertop. 10 minutes to clean with soap and water, 20 minutes to spray on sealer and let stand, 5 minutes to wipe it off. Or if you are a bit more active and give your kitchen a big once over more than once a year you can seal it each time. Truthfully it takes less to maintain your kitchen countertop, where you spend a large chunk of your time, than it does to wash your car numerous times a year. If you are really a party animal than I would agree with another commenter, that you should go with one of our 4 patina'd mixes. Two of them are our best sellers, but I won's say which, I'll leave that up to you.

D. Chipping: Like with any countertop the sharper the edge you put on it the less durable it is, whether it be stone, quartz, laminate or Vetrazzo. You can put any edge you wish on it, but we do recommend a softer, more rounded edge if you have a very active kitchen, both for the Vetrazzo's sake and yours. When you're chasing rugrats around its much nicer to lean/bump into a bullnose counter than a sharp edge.

E. Pricing: Vetrazzo does come at a bit of a higher cost for a couple of reasons. One, it is completely sourced and manufactured in California. We could make it in China at an 1/18 of the cost, but that would be exploitative and environmentally unfavorable in numerous ways. This would negate our entire mission here, to provide American jobs while manufacturing a sustainable alternative to stone, which also deals with an environmental issue by keeping trash out of landfills. Two, the price of unique design, your Vetrazzo is a unique hand crafted piece of material that is far from a commodity like granite. At full capacity Vetrazzo can produce 20 slabs a day, that's only 80 slabs a month at full speed. According to Spanish owned Cosentino, one of the biggest stone importers in the US (and the maker of Silestone) Cosentino expanded just one of their stone processing plants in Brazil to pump out 350 SHIPPING CONTAINERS of stone a month in 2008. Source: http://www.cosentinonorthamerica.com/news/pressreleases/Cosentino%20partners%20with%20Stone%20Fabricators%20PRESS%20RELEASE.pdf The NY Times stated "Granite is so last decade." This mass quarrying/production may explain why. You will find Vetrazzo in Wholefoods, but you won't find it in a gas station bathroom like 2CM granite. Vetrazzo has a high-end look because it is made in a high-end way to out-preform other materials.

All this being said, we have lowered our prices in 2010 and your fabricators quotes should reflect that... if they don't, give us a call and we will sort it out for you.

And if any other dealers tell you that Vetrazzo is not good for kitchens... be warry that they are not just trying to make a quick sale on a cheaper inferior product. Vetrazzo has been used in kitchens for over 14 years now. If Vetrazzo is what you want we will help you find the right people to make it happen. If Vetrazzo is not what you want, thats cool too, its not for everybody. But there are some great materials out there that are truly eco-friendly as well, including Paperstone, Richlight and they are doing some really cool stuff with bamboo right now, check out Kirei if that interests you.

I hope this was helpful and cleared some things up.

Cheers,

Craig

We have Floating Blue Vetrazzo. Our Cabinets are one of Shaker series in alder butternut finish. We haven't really been in the kitchen yet so I can't comment about durability and staining issues. Highly recommend an experienced fabricator because of our experiences. It is expensive and we live within 500 miles from Richmond. Respectfully disagree, in that I believe one of patina-ed lines like Alehouse would look wonderful in a traditional kitchen. When we talked with our KD she doublechecked and was told that Vetrazzo was the best of the bunch.

Keep digging cuz I thought I saw something like Vetrazzo in the Chicago area.

Craig -

Can you comment on the LEEDS factor for distance traveled from the point
of origin? I thought that it is something like 500 miles - "max" - Am I off on that?

What is the spec on that, and does it realy have some impact on a consumer
wanting to use it in their homes that's more than 500 miles away from SF?

thanks in advance for addressing this question

kevin

Squarefour,

I thought I had seen a product like Vetrazzo in the Chicago area.

Google Gilasi glass and their website will come up. They have some that are like Vetrazzo in shape and some like Icestone. They have quite a few where the cement's color is a closer match to the glass as well.

Check it out!

Kevin,

In regards to LEED Certification you are correct that for the Locally Sourced Material Credit (LSMC) it needs to be manufactured within 500 miles so if your project is more than 500 miles from where the product is created you cannot qualify for that specific credit. Beware that numerous surfacing products out there try to skirt this and mis-inform the consumer by saying that they can qualify for the LSMC by using one of their local fabricators. This is wholly untrue, as fabrication is not the manufacturing of the material. If local fabrication was all that was needed for the LSMC than all structural framing of houses would qualify as locally sourced wood.

The truth is that a countertop can rarely get you a full credit on its own. LEED credits for building materials (not energy efficient aspects) are for the most part based on a weight/cost matrix. Often the weight of countertop does not account for enough of a percentage of the weight of all the materials used. It can help towards a number of credits, but none will get you a credit on its own.

The LEED weight/credit basis for points for building materials is why you see that a lot of LEED projects use a whole mess of concrete. This is because its heavy, they can pack it with fly-ash to increase the recycled content, and it can take up a good chunk of the overall cost if you use it for walls instead of just the foundation. Concrete is also great for walls because it creates an energy efficient envelope for the building.

Vetrazzo can help you get LEED credits for high use of recycled content as Vetrazzo is 83% recycled content. Hope that helps.

Kevin, we're just north of Sheboygan. You've escaped winter!

Craig, I appreciate the info and have to say that you have a beautiful product. It is nice to hear that you have prioritized manufacture in the US. How about a Midwest branch?

Earth pal, I see the Gilasi glass site and find retail locations in the Milwaukee area. Thank you for the lead. Has anyone used this product?

Thanks for some great feedback!

Craig-

That's some very interesting stuff on the LEEDS credits - I'm glad you chimed in
on this. I learned something new today!!!
I thought that the distance had some play in the grand scheme of things, but out of ALL of the various components making a product officially "green" as in LEED certified - what would you say is the most important aspect as it relates to green products?

This is very informative, and I hope that more people will look at doing things
that are more "green oriented" - You and I have talked in the past, and I really
like Vetrazzo's products.

Any more education you can offer would be very helpful and I always want
to learn more about different products.

Squarefour - The BEST time of the year is right around the corner for y'all
up there - BRATWURST TIME!!! Now THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKIN ABOUT!!!!
And THEN there's - PACKER SEASON!!!! Pure Heaven on Earth!!! Eatin a BRAT
and watching the Green Bay Packers!!!

kevin

I love the look of the vetrazzo and I want to get a sample of the classic black but I am having a hard time locating a sample. I went on line to purchase a sample but the classic black is out of stock. My contractor was finally able to find someone who carries vetrazzo but they have no samples of the classic black. Does anyone have a sample I could purchase or know where I can get one?

We have it in our whole house and love it. It's quite expensive. Nearly double that of quartz.