Getting our Marbles

OK, that was a post title worthy of Noel. But here's the latest development: the marble is installed in the kitchen and dining room.

This is the most impressive piece of marble, in part because it is the biggest. It does have one small flaw in this photo, can you see it? No? There's supposed to be a small sink in there. Whoops. These things can be resolved, but I'm glad it's not me having to figure out how to resolve it.

As evidence that this can be solved without literally tearing the entire house down and starting over (how I usually solve minor errors in my knitting, so surely it works out the same for renovations, right?):

There it is. I think they got it in by sliding it in from the front of the cabinet, but maybe there are smarter ways to make it happen that I'm not savvy to.

I spent some time looking at this and puzzling it over when I saw it, let me tell you. But that's not the impressive part. This is:

This piece of marble was installed in two pieces. That made it just a lot easier to cut and fit, and I don't mind small seams and imperfections that express something about how an item is built. I expected to see a visible seam line, but honestly, you can't even see it unless you go looking. I'm very impressed with how they did this work.

Here's the marble at the kitchen sink, which is mostly sink because, you know, that's how sinks work: the top needs to be open for the water to go in. This sink is where we will wash cooking pots and do vegetable prep.

And on the other side of the stove, the stack of drawers.

People have tutted at me about having white marble around a stove, especially a stove like ours where we will be using it all the time. But I don't mind if the marble gets a little stained up here and there. I don't want to go out of my way to stain it, but if our tomato sauce cooking stains it up, that's how it is.

You really can't have marble and an obsession with things staying exactly the same and perfect forever. Not if you plan to live in your house. If that's the kind of person you are you need a different kind of stone.

We used the same marble on the dining room built-ins. I bought two slabs of this marble, just to be sure I had enough for the kitchen and the pantry and the dining room. I laid it all out leaving enough room around stuff, and was really nervous about getting everything there. But the marble guys performed a miracle.

We had enough marble to use as the counters in the food pantry, as well. I had been expecting that we'd run out and have to rely on Caesarstone or some other solid surface material -- that was OK with me for the pantry. But no, they were somehow able to get enough material for two counters this size (I won't bore you by showing both of them). Amazing.

posted by ayse on 05/19/17