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flatlander62

We selected our granite today

18 years ago

We picked our slab today and I owe a big thank you to the memebers of this board who responded to my previous post lamenting the choices in granite I was given when I ordered through Home Depot. I followed your advice and canceled the HD order (I was surprised they let us out of the contract so easily and refunded our money). We went to an independent yard recommended by a friend and were given the choice of hundreds of slabs for the same price as the A group granite at Home Depot. HDs A group consists of maybe five granites, all really consistent patterns. I was disappointed in the choices because I felt stuck with a pauper's budget after hanging out here for awhile and coming to love the more varied patterns in many of the higher end kitchens. So anyway, today was our second visit to the yard and we ended up choosing this slab of Typhoon Green. Honestly I hadn't started out looking for a green but the richer greens really made my ginger spice glazed cabinets "pop." The color isn't very true here and looks muted on my screen but there are various shades of greeen, white, grey, black specks and even bits of a reddish purple. And lot's of movement, yay!

Thank you--I'm really happy and excited about getting granite again!

{{!gwi}}

Comments (16)

  • 18 years ago

    Very Nice looking choice you made!

    Keep us posted on progress - and post
    pics when you are done!!!

    kevin

    Kevin M. Padden MIA SFA
    Fabricator, Trainer & Consultant to the Natural Stone Industry
    www.azschoolofrock.com

  • 18 years ago

    That is lovely. I am glad you were able to get what you wanted.

  • 18 years ago

    Wow--that looks neat!

  • 18 years ago

    really nice looking with your cabinets! I definitely see why you chose it. Take lots of pictures when it's installed.

  • 18 years ago

    Whew! Looks like the ocean! Beautiful!

    Anyone know the secret to photographing granite? It seems very hard to get a good picture. Maybe need an old SLR with a low shutter speed?

  • 18 years ago

    That is gorgeous! It reminds me of a small sample I saw at the Home and Garden Show and fell in love with. It was called Delirium (I think) and I imagined that it would look like yours in a slab. I have yet to visit a granite yard to confirm that it does. I can't wait to see yours installed. How soon can we expect photos?!!

  • 18 years ago

    i've seen typhoon green in person and really like it- congratulations on waiting and gettong the right thing. i. too, have been "spoiled" hanging out there and am hoping to reserve my "granite with movement" within the next week.

  • 18 years ago

    Very pretty :) Be sure to install the stuff...I picked out my slabs ummm a year ago :oP And they are still in the yard with my name on them :o(

  • 18 years ago

    I love Typhoon Green, but I almost had a heart attack when I got the pricing from the fabricator for our 4.5 x 8.5 island. I know it differs regionally, but how did the price compare to your A group pricing from Home Depot?

  • 18 years ago

    Oh my gosh, I can't even believe I had the good fortune to have "my granite guy" recommended to me. The Typhoon Green is actually only costing me a tiny bit more than HD's normal "A" granite list selections would installed.

    HD priced the granite then added for the sink cutout and for the edging (nothing fancy, just bullnose). "My granite guy" (said with a lot of love) normally works the commercial side of the business and the occasional uber-rich highrise condo client. He told my husband and I that they make enough profit on the "sky people" (the very, very wealthy penthouse dwellers) that he sometimes likes to do something nice for the "regular people." It wasn't until the day after that I stopped to think,"huh, what makes us come off as regular people?" Our good fortune in this case.

    Anyway, between his discount, not charging any extra for whatever edge we chose or cutting out the sink, and recalculating the square footage (although the owner caught him on this one and said "my granite guy" tends to underestimate square footage on purpose to be able to give the "regular people" a discount), the Typhoon Green will run me a total of about $200 more than Uba Tuba, Santa Cecilia, Baltic Brown, Black Pearl, ie, the HD "A" group slabs in our area (Southwest Florida). It's not a common granite around here and would have been beyond the D group for HD and probably up in their "exotic" pricing.

    HD has done a decent job for me as far as cabinets go, timeliness, etc, so I don't want to put them down as I walked into the store 8 weeks ago without a clue of what I was getting into, but wow, I can't believe the difference in attention and care from the local guy.

    Best of all, here's the timeline: the cabinets will be be installed Tuesday, granite templating will be Wednesday, granite will be installed Thursday, and plumbing connected on Friday, All so we'll have a kitchen by Christmas. They are going out of their way and working overtime to get this done, because otherwise they close shop from December 22 to January 8 and we'd be kitchenless for that long.

    This isn't a high end job so I'm actually a little shy about posting this, but here's our kitchen 8 weeks ago (the appliances were new):
    {{!gwi}}

    And here it is today:

    {{!gwi}}

    If all goes well, by next Friday it'll be done except for the backsplash. We're keeping the layout and flooring, though I would have liked to have pulled a Weedyacres and ripped it all out and started from scratch. Unfortunately, when I walked into this I was clueless. But at least I'll love my granite....

  • 18 years ago

    Congratulations, from one new typhoon green granite owner to another (or soon-to-be)! I've had mine less than a month, but I love it more every day. You've made an excellent choice!

  • 18 years ago

    Wow, Japper... that's a great story. Our Typhoon Green slab was going to cost approximately $1100-1300 more than the group A ones you mentioned (according to our fabricator). Just yesterday I told another granite place my original choice and what my budget was and he pretty much laughed out loud. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a tad jealous but I am glad that there are nice people out there who aren't just out to make as much as they can! :) I can't wait to see it after it's installed! Nice work on your kitchen thus far.

  • 18 years ago

    japper,
    The granite is gorgeous, but - and I hate to "but" in here - it looks like you're keeping the old quite dated cabinets just removing the uppers and replacing the countertops with granite. Is that so? Are the cabinets in good shape and do you see yourself keeping them for the next several years? If not, it seems a waste to put a beautiful new granite over them, as it will end up getting tossed as soon as you decide to change the kitchen cabinets. That laminate with oak trim style is quite dated and while I hate to be faddish, that is a style and probably an age of cabinets that have been popularly getting flipped.

    I don't want to go where it isn't my business but I do say this because we were considering doing just as you did and replacing our worn out laminate counter tops with granite, keeping the old cabinets but after looking a little bit, it seemed like a waste to put a lovely granite over the dodgey old cabinets we had. Ours were fine to look at, not falling apart etc. but basically they offered very little storage as they were the kind that were just a box with a mini shelf half way up, foot-wide center stiles between doors and all that. So, we flipped the cabinets, too, so that the whole thing is more integrated.

  • 18 years ago

    wow, did you get a good deal on that stone!i'm looking at typhoon/"exotic" level stones and they would be thousand(s) more than those "A" stones

  • 18 years ago

    ksfaustin--Now that I'm a Typhoon-Greener, I'd love to see your kitchen!

    kcinkc--I do feel really lucky to have gotten such a great price. I don't think we could have gotten this price from any one else, not even at the same yard, just "my granite guy" is so nice. Because he handles the big jobs at the yard, he can sort of bury the little ones in his figures. I owe a huge Thank you to the members of this board who convinced me to seek out other granite sources.

    Mindstorm--HaHa. Don't worry, ALL of the cabinets are being replaced. Those are 18 years old and came with the house, new. What you see in the picture is the partial destruction. HD would've charged 2k to remove the tile counters so we did that ourselves. They are supposed to remove the old cabinets, but husband had a friend who wanted some of them for his garage, so they got an early start removing them. What we are keeping to remain in budget is the flooring, to be replaced "someday," and the pantry. We'll change the doors on the latter for now, but I'm envisioning knocking it all out and replacing it sooner rather than later. And paint, darn I just painted the golden yellow last year and hate to do it again so soon, but I'm afraid it won't go so well with the Typhoon Green. The problem is the kitchen, dining and living (basically half the house) sits under one vaulted ceiling. You can't just paint the kitchen, everything has to go. But that's a different post...

  • 18 years ago

    oh I was actually thinking that the typhoon green with all it's purples / greens/ reddish would go great with those yellow walls!

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