In the Thick of a Kitchen Renovation–Thinking about Countertops

We are in the thick of a kitchen renovation, and I am beginning to get excited about it, now that the plastic is down and we can see the big change we made by cutting a 4′ x 6′ hole in the wall between the kitchen and the living room.

New England houses built in the 1920s were made up of such small rooms–there is now a cottage industry with contractors knocking down walls, making these huge interior windows, and trying to undo the claustrophobic designs that kept each room separate. I notice again and again that very few new houses have this many walls, they go inevitably for the open floor plan.

Barring removing large pieces of structure that keep the upstairs bedrooms from falling down, we went for the big interior window idea. Now I can hear the saws and the pneumatic hammers finishing up the trim, with those lovely fluted pieces of molding at the tops of the windows to match the original.

Our next big investment is a stone countertop to cover a new peninsula we are having made.  The question of whether to use granite, or the very appealing Ashfield Stone, or some other hard substance is a decision we’ll make over the weekend. We are going on a countertop road trip to see what we can find out and what we can afford to top off this big kitchen project.