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January 20, 2009

“SEAMED” Like a Good Idea at the Time:
The Saga of Our Kitchen Countertops

I was first introduced to a phenomenal material called “shetkaSTONE” at a home and garden show in Charlotte last spring. I decided right off that this was a perfect fit for the kitchen because it is practically indestructible, looks beautiful, is made in the US, and has a 100% sustainable life cycle. The product is made from pre- and post-consumer paper waste, and all by-products and the final product itself can be recycled. Impressive, eh?

Marty White took this picture while at the shetkaSTONE factory. Your looking at piles of shredded old money. shetkaStone also uses this material to make countertops and tabletops.

shetkaSTONE manufacturers custom countertops to exact size and shape at their facility in Le Center, Minnesota. My countertop installer, Piedmont Surfaces, of Eden, NC, made the templates and sent them to the folks in Minnesota.

Curious about the new product, Marty White, owner of Piedmont Surfaces, took a trip to Minnesota to tour the shetkaSTONE facility and learn more about the process. He was impressed with what he saw and the people he met. I think a lot of Marty, and if he says the people were “awfully nice” I believe him. All that said, the wait for these much anticipated countertops, made from recycled cardboard boxes, was long. Turns out there is slow turnaround on the recycled box material that shetkaSTONE uses for this particular light coffee colored countertop I had ordered. (I guess that’s more incentive NOT to throw away your cardboard boxes. Recycle them, because companies like shetkaSTONE really need them to stay on schedule!)

This is the obvious seam in the original shetkaSTONE installation in the kitchen. Material was beautiful, but the seaming issues led to our using another material for this installation.

Finally the countertops arrived and I visited the jobsite just as Piedmont Surfaces was finishing up the installation. They were beautiful and Piedmont Surfaces did an expert job installing them. There was just one glitch that couldn’t go unnoticed. In the unique corner of our kitchen, where three very large pieces fit together, there was a rather obvious color difference on either side of the two seams. I say “rather obvious” but the fact is, it was pretty bad. It wasn’t something I wanted to live with and it certainly wasn’t something I wanted to showcase in the upcoming Greenspiration open houses.

Needless to say, I placed a quick call to shetkaSTONE. They offered to redo the countertops (which would put us even more behind schedule) but admitted they may have the same problem again.

(WHAT?!!!!) This was a problem. A real problem. Thing was, I still loved this countertop. I loved that it was domestic and I especially loved that it was a beautiful yet neutral material made from recycled paper. I was bitterly disappointed.

As I talked with the folks at shetkaSTONE, I learned that this particular color I had chosen, “Café Brown” had been giving them some color matching issues, particularly when it came to very large slabs. They were addressing the problems and felt like they would eventually be able to resolve them, but had not quite yet. They agreed to return my deposit and were very apologetic.

This is the Zodiaq Terra product (made from recycled quartz) which ultimately used in the kitchen. Not only is this a luxurious, highly durable product, it was a dead-on color match with the shetkaSTONE which allowed us to still use one small section of that product in the kitchen.

Of course, now I needed a new countertop – and I needed one fast. Luckily, I had begun to consult with Jon Orentstein of Carolina Custom Surfaces, the company that had installed the Zodiaq® Terra product in the master bath. This is a totally awesome product made from quartz and recycled glass and they just happened to have a color that was dead-on the same color as the shetkaSTONE product, so the kitchen color scheme would stay in tact. Plus, the product was readily available and within a week or so, my countertops were in and they looked gorgeous.

Despite my disappointment over the shetkaSTONE, I wouldn’t trade this maintenance-free product for any solid natural stone on the market. It’s a real workhorse of a countertop and is also very elegant looking. The fact that it was such a good color match with the shetkaSTONE made it possible for us to keep one small section of that product. Even though we would not be using shetkaSTONE for the rest of the kitchen, I still wanted to showcase the material. Like Marty White, Jon Orenstein of Carolina Custom Surfaces, was also impressed with the product. A veteran in the countertop business, Jon has seen the evolution of other manmade countertop materials firsthand. According to Jon, all manmade countertops face these same seaming issues and eventually overcome them. It just so happens I caught shetkaSTONE at a point when they were literally in the throws of resolving theirs. I liked this company, and I was totally impressed with their support of my talking candidly about my experiences here. How many companies have that kind of integrity?

Marty also took this picture at the shetkaSTONE factory. Commercial surfaces and table tops is an area where shetkaSTONE really shines.

So, like any number of other knuckle bleaching scenarios that we have experienced throughout this process, it all worked out. I absolutely adore the Zodiaq Terra product. (Seriously, I LOVE this product!) And I’m grateful the expertise and foresight of two different countertop companies, Piedmont Surfaces and Carolina Custom Surfaces.

This home has a total of six different countertop materials which we will be showcasing soon in the upcoming Nature Nurture Day open house series. With the exception of one small “scrap” piece of granite, none of these products were imported!

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