Countertop saga drags on

Remember how we were having countertop woes? Our fabricator-install guy said he put a “hold” on the countertop we wanted in Phoenix, but then he quit answering our phone calls. We waited anxiously for awhile, but when I noticed online that the countertop suddenly went on clearance, we called the slab yard. Turns out the “hold” was basically meaningless because the slabs hadn’t been paid for. Anybody could buy them at any point. Then what would we do?

We were still in Seattle, or maybe on our way to Montana, but wherever we were, it was nowhere near Phoenix. We debated – should one of us fly down to Phoenix to look at the countertop in person, or should we just buy it over the phone with a credit card?

We had managed to figure out we needed three slabs. Or at least I think we do – we are hoping that’s correct. We still don’t actually have a fabricator. We did not know how long it was going to take to find a fabricator. So should we hold off on buying anything and keep trying to find a new fabricator, or just buy it sight unseen from the internet pictures?

They don’t actually like selling slab sight unseen (for obvious reasons) and discouraged me when I had called from Seattle looking into the possibility. But I had looked at so many slabs for so many months that I felt like I knew what we wanted.

After all, we’ve bought houses sight unseen. If we can buy a house without looking at it first, we can definitely buy three slabs of quartzite. And the only time we’ve backed out of a contract was due to a serious issue that arose during inspections – such as the septic failure in Placitas in 2017.)

I knew the slab was good enough. We didn’t want “amazing”, we wanted something with a natural feel that would blend well with the burnt adobe brick, the terracotta floor tiles, and the cabinets we had already purchased.

I didn’t want someone else to buy it, particularly now that it was on clearance. I had looked at hundreds of slabs, some in person, many on the internet and I had not been able to find anything that we both liked that was the right colors to go with the other materials in the kitchen.

We weighed our options, pulled together our courage, and bought the slabs over the phone. And they let us do it! When John called he kind of implied, without actually saying it, that I had seen the slabs. “Yes, I’m calling to buy the slabs that my wife picked out…” Lol. They gave him the clearance price too.

About two weeks later, on our way back to Albuquerque after getting my CT scan done in Tucson, we stopped by Phoenix to see the slabs we had bought. They were actually very difficult to see in the noon glare. But they seemed fine. They were exactly what I was expecting except – in my mind I didn’t blow them up big enough.

We’re used to seeing small internet pictures of household sized items. But this was a small internet picture of something very, very large. In my mind I had blown the pattern up a few times – but these slabs are something like 10 feet long by over 6 feet wide. They are huge! I knew that intellectually, but it was still hard to picture. So the pattern was less condensed than I had imagined.

Here’s the internet photo; subtly beautiful I thought:

Here’s us trying to hold up our cabinet sample against a slab in the noon Phoenix glare. It’s all washed out and you can’t really see the color.

Here it is with our floor tile sample:

It was very squinty and hard to see.

Bottom line is we’re not really going to know what it looks like until after it’s installed. And then we’re going to have to like it! Or learn to like it. Because we are not going to be changing it!

It should be fine. It has a slight bluish-greenish tinge in places to tie in with the sage-gray cabinet, and rust streaks to tie in with the terracotta tile. And it’s a natural stone, so it looks and feels natural. And the pattern isn’t too crazy. I think it will be perfect.

Speaking of crazy patterns, John had to get his photo in front of this monstrosity.

In addition to being drastically ugly (the quartzite, not my husband), this slab is enormously expensive. Don’t worry, we didn’t spend even a fraction of that amount per slab on our quartzite.

I guess it’s beautiful in an artistic way, but can you imagine having to process that before you’ve had your coffee in the morning? It’s a bit of a visual assault. It would wake you up, that’s for sure. I’d be like, “Eh, mind already blown enough for the morning; I don’t think I need any coffee after all”.

Oh, and no, we’re not using that greenish octagon backsplash John’s holding. Or at least not in the kitchen. Maybe in the bathroom around the tub, but it’s not calm enough for the kitchen.

We’re keeping it simple! Or trying to at least.

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