A record of White Corian Counter Review

Merry Countermas to us!

They are here. And they are spectacular.

Simply as a reminder, the cave room looked like this back when we moved in last December:

But back to our brand-spanking-new Corian counters. I did not expect them to feel as chunky, heavy, and stone-like as they do. They are like marble without the veins. Seriously. Nothing plastic-y about them. And they are sleek but sort of matte too if that makes sense, which looks/feels truly chic and sort of honed-marble-ish (according to our installer the white matte ones are the only ones that do not show scratches, which will certainly come in handy). So yeah, it is safe to say that we are fully smitten.

Of course things were looking a bit rough when they went in, but we are used to the room looking like crazytown by now:

One of the coolest things to watch was how they made them fully seamless by filling the cracks where the slabs met with some sort of glue-caulk and getting it suuuuuper hot with these defibrillator-looking pieces:

Then they were flash cooled and the installer polished them until the seams were fully gone. Seriously, I will give anyone who can tell where they were a hundred bucks because it is impossible. Oh but for this step of the project Burger, Clara, and I went for a pleasant long walk and John shut himself up in our bedroom because it was a little fumey while the glue-caulk was heated up and cooled and smoothed down (but it thankfully was not a dusty or messy process, which was pleasant). So I did not come back to chaos, simply striking white amazingness with the fan going and the windows open.

Here is where one of the seams ran (right up this corner) before he worked his installer magic. No evidence of it at all, right? Three cheers for shape-shifting counters. And yes, that is a baguette. We are fancy like that.

The guy was excellent about talking us through maintenance stuff. Here are a few of the lively things that I stood there and in fact took notes about because I am ridiculous (in my defense, the guy seemed to be entertained by my furious scribbling):

• Corian is nonporous, which means stains cannot penetrate it (and most of them can simply be scrubbed off, even if you do not catch them right away)
• If stubborn stains (like red wine that somehow sits for a few days) do discolor the top layer of the Corian, a spray bottle full of 10 ounces of water and 1 ounce of bleach should strip the stain right out.
• The white color runs all the way through the counter, so if some insane spot refuses to come out, it can be lightly sanded in a circular motion with extremely high grit sandpaper (400 grit) and then followed with a quite fine buffing pad (which was provided to us by the installer along with the sandpaper). It is like they knew we were DIYers. So we do not have to call anyone in to “resurface” things in a decade or two if we feel like polishing them up because they essentially taught us how to do it ourselves.
• Our counters are warranteed for 10 years, so if anything ever cracks or otherwise has issues they can come fix it for free (holla!) using the same method they used to fill the seams, which makes any prior damage fully undetectable.

So that combined with the fact that John’s sister has had the same exact counters for five years with three kids and a big dog (and zero repairs/stains) makes us deliriously excited. And I am glad to report that we are not being nearly as anal as we were with our first kitchen’s granite counters (the light color of them truly freaked us out in the beginning). We have jumped right into using our kitchen even more – so things like spaghetti sauce have already made an appearance without any disastrous results.

Oh but there is one problem. Our sleek new counters make our old cabinets look like crapola by comparison…

… but once we sand, prime, and paint them (along with fiiiinally replacing the eyeball hardware) they should be worthy of such fairly countertop company. Cannot wait to rebuild/cut down some matching doors and get to the whole priming & painting step.

You can read all about why we chose white Corian and how much it costs here, and how the templating process went here. This post is simply truly about photos. Glorious, glorious photos of the counter that we waited 20 sinkless days for (read more about removing the old counters and sink here).

See that hulking 3 foot by 5 foot peninsula? Pictures do not capture how big it truly is (it is larger than the wood dining table that we used to have in here). That baby is pure joy. So much space to spread out and bake/craft/eat/serve up appetizers, etc. The kitchen is fairly much 100% more functional and there are not even stools there yet (or any wood trim pieces on the back and side of the peninsula to hide those ugly brackets)…

Oh yeah and see those counter edges on the peninsula above? They are gently curved, so there is no pokey part to stab Clara in the eye or John in the hip or me in the belly (yes, we are all dramatically distinct heights around here).

And for those wondering how we have been dealing with an in-progress kitchen and asking if we have been eating out every night, we have in fact been truly lucky to have a fully functional fridge, stove, and dishwasher this time around (which was not the case during our first kitchen gut job). So we have still been eating/cooking at home without counters and a sink (we simply used a piece of plywood leaned on top of the cabinets as prep space with a cutting board and other platters and plates to keep us from in fact prepping food on the plywood). But the whole washing-pots-and-pans-in-the-tub thing was getting old. So glad to have this guy back in action:

Our counter fabricators even left us a handy little cutting board that they made out of the sink hole for us, which can also be used as a trivet (especially hot things should not be placed directly on Corian counters, but we never put hot stuff on our old granite counters without a cutting board or trivet, so we should be cool). Oh and for anyone local wondering who we used for installation, we were beyond thrilled with Five Star (our installers) who were hired through Home Depot (where we ordered our Corian). More on that here.

Oh but wait, before the counters went in we hid a little time capsule behind one of the cabinets (which will only be found when our counters are someday took out).

John sweetly wrote it. It reads:

Today our new countertops are being installed. We are a family of three (well, four if you count our chihuahua Hamburger). I am The builder (age 30), my wife Sherry (age 29) and I moved here 11 months ago in December of 2010 with our daughter Clara (age 1.5). We write a journal about our home improvement adventures called Turbodizin (www.turbodizin.com). If you are reading this it means you are likely getting new counters too. Hope you enjoy them!

Here is how we hid it behind the corner cabinet by the window (stapled to the back of the cabinet in a ziplock bag).

Ah memories. We can hardly picture the top of the cabinets anymore. Is not it weird how your eyes adjust so fast? So next up we have to cut down and hang a cabinet for the built-in microwave next to the pantry, start trying to retrofit/build matching doors for the secondhand cabinets that we brought in to the room, prime and paint the cabinets, tackle the backsplash, hang our built-in range hood and floating shelves, redo all the lighting, lay the cork floors, install our new stainless dishwasher, add crown molding, etc. Whew. Might not be done until late January (we originally were aiming for early Jan) but we are inching slowly towards the finish line. Simply taking things one day at a time seems to be the secret to sanity. That and washing things in the sink again. Oh man, it is good to have that guy back.

UPDATE: We are officially in love with our new counters. Check out the update post about them here.