3 ms·

It's basically a $100k diamond ring, except with more granite countertops. The stock kitchen for a middle-class house in suburban USA and a kitchen with $100k

by patio11 12y ago

It's basically a $100k diamond ring, except with more granite countertops. The stock kitchen for a middle-class house in suburban USA and a kitchen with $100k of work done to it are functionally identical for 98% of people who buy them, but the one with $100k spent on it looks like $100k was spent on it (if you're in the know). Less sardonically: "professional-grade" appliances, granite countertops, redone cabinets which were custom-built by artisans out of exotic-but-sustainable wood as opposed to something which came out of a factory in China, etc, will all let you spend arbitrary amounts of money in a kitchen.

_delirium 12y ago
$100k is going way overboard, but I do think a nice kitchen with nice materials makes a significant difference in usability and comfort (a nice kitchen can be had for in the $10-20k range). I've lived in all three of: 1) an all-linoleum cheap suburban house; 2) a nice apartment where the kitchen had tile/stone surfaces; and 3) a recent prefab-via-IKEA wooden-countertop kitchen ensemble. Of those, #2 really was the nicest to use, followed by #3 and #1. Lineoleum and wood are just much less practical countertop materials than any kind of stone. They're fragile and mark easily, so you have to be really careful with knives and hot items. Of the two, linoleum is worse on heat-sensitivity, while wood is worse on picking up stains. Granite has the advantage of being hard to stain or mar, so even though I don't like the look of those black-granite countertops, they are nice to use and maintain. Marble can be cheaper in many places (esp. Europe) and imo actually looks nicer, but is more porous so has to be frequently resealed to avoid stains. If a kitchen is cheap enough, granted, it could be a reasonable strategy to just treat it as disposable and replace the surfaces every few years, if you don't mind it always looking beat-up. I grew up in a home with all linoleum and we did exactly that right before we sold it: put in all-new countertop and floor when we were about to sell and then avoided using it to avoid marring it, so it'd look quite misleadingly nice for the realtor showings. But it wouldn't be my first choice in surface, if I had any spare cash.
- mechanical_fish 12y ago
  I call upon the over-the-top stylings of professionally trained chef Alton Brown: http://youtu.be/iKkf9YYwmGQ http://youtu.be/iKkf9YYwmGQ ... to explain, kinda painfully, that you can't use a sharp knife on a stone counter or you'll dull the knife. You need a cutting board. Or a wood countertop. I understand the concern about heat but I've cooked with linoleum counters for my entire life, mostly as a baker, and I don't remember damaging one. It's just a question of not getting into the habit of setting hot objects on arbitrary surfaces. I and every cook in my family has a nice little collection of trivets, which cost a few dollars each and often come with college logos or bad jokes on them. Of course, this probably makes us look lower-class. See above under "status symbol". We also have the confidence that, should we make a mistake, we can always buy a second or even a third linoleum countertop and still be saving money over granite or engineered stone. That said, there's a good chance I'll end up owning a stone counter someday anyway just because, in the Massachusetts market, status symbols matter, and signals of recent renovations matter even more. We have a lot of lead paint, buried asbestos, hidden knob-and-tube wiring, and sixty-year-old hack-job plumbing around here, and anything you can do to suggest that your kitchen's walls have recently been opened and pronounced up-to-code is worth doing.
  - _delirium 12y ago
    Sure you can get by with many things, and I mostly have. But if I had some money, I'd buy something more durable. Admittedly, I might not actually buy granite: tile countertops are cheaper, and have many of the advantages I'm looking for. I don't cut on countertops, and agree that's bad for knives (I use cutting boards, as is traditional even in countries like Italy and Greece where stone countertops are the norm). But I do often have sharp things in the kitchen. The last time I dinged a counter it wasn't even due to a knife, but because I accidentally dropped a corkscrew. Would've been no problem with stone or tile, but since I don't have those, it caused a permanent mark where the tip hit! With wood countertops I've found myself paranoid about even setting a coffee cup or wine glass down without a coaster, lest it leave stains that are hard to remove. And with linoleum I'm always paranoid that even a bowl taken from reheating in the microwave will leave a ring-shaped heat-mark. In addition to tile as a stone alternative, I am somewhat curious about the newer generation of synthetic countertops. I have heard that modern Corian countertops (or generic brands making Corian®-style countertops) are quite durable, and somewhere in price between linoleum and stone.
- tptacek 12y ago
  For what it's worth: we just renovated, and we have linoleum floors now. They're great; grippy, still pleasant to walk on, and, most importantly, easy to clean. You'd need to be way, way overpaying to end up spending mid-5-figures on countertops.
  - FireBeyond 12y ago
    There is nothing more horrific than grout (and the cleaning thereof) in a kitchen.
tptacek 12y ago
Forget "exotic but sustainable wood" and "artisans". Just put the word "custom" next to "cabinet". Five figures. That is what custom cabinets cost. We were back-and-forth on custom cabinets versus IKEA cabinets. We weren't looking to make a vanity cabinet purchase. We just couldn't get the storage --- particularly the pullouts --- that we wanted from IKEA. Kitchens are really expensive.

by patio11 12y ago

_delirium 12y ago

$100k is going way overboard, but I do think a nice kitchen with nice materials makes a significant difference in usability and comfort (a nice kitchen can be had for in the $10-20k range). I've lived in all three of: 1) an all-linoleum cheap suburban house; 2) a nice apartment where the kitchen had tile/stone surfaces; and 3) a recent prefab-via-IKEA wooden-countertop kitchen ensemble. Of those, #2 really was the nicest to use, followed by #3 and #1. Lineoleum and wood are just much less practical countertop materials than any kind of stone. They're fragile and mark easily, so you have to be really careful with knives and hot items. Of the two, linoleum is worse on heat-sensitivity, while wood is worse on picking up stains. Granite has the advantage of being hard to stain or mar, so even though I don't like the look of those black-granite countertops, they are nice to use and maintain. Marble can be cheaper in many places (esp. Europe) and imo actually looks nicer, but is more porous so has to be frequently resealed to avoid stains. If a kitchen is cheap enough, granted, it could be a reasonable strategy to just treat it as disposable and replace the surfaces every few years, if you don't mind it always looking beat-up. I grew up in a home with all linoleum and we did exactly that right before we sold it: put in all-new countertop and floor when we were about to sell and then avoided using it to avoid marring it, so it'd look quite misleadingly nice for the realtor showings. But it wouldn't be my first choice in surface, if I had any spare cash.

mechanical_fish 12y ago
I call upon the over-the-top stylings of professionally trained chef Alton Brown: http://youtu.be/iKkf9YYwmGQ http://youtu.be/iKkf9YYwmGQ ... to explain, kinda painfully, that you can't use a sharp knife on a stone counter or you'll dull the knife. You need a cutting board. Or a wood countertop. I understand the concern about heat but I've cooked with linoleum counters for my entire life, mostly as a baker, and I don't remember damaging one. It's just a question of not getting into the habit of setting hot objects on arbitrary surfaces. I and every cook in my family has a nice little collection of trivets, which cost a few dollars each and often come with college logos or bad jokes on them. Of course, this probably makes us look lower-class. See above under "status symbol". We also have the confidence that, should we make a mistake, we can always buy a second or even a third linoleum countertop and still be saving money over granite or engineered stone. That said, there's a good chance I'll end up owning a stone counter someday anyway just because, in the Massachusetts market, status symbols matter, and signals of recent renovations matter even more. We have a lot of lead paint, buried asbestos, hidden knob-and-tube wiring, and sixty-year-old hack-job plumbing around here, and anything you can do to suggest that your kitchen's walls have recently been opened and pronounced up-to-code is worth doing.
- _delirium 12y ago
  Sure you can get by with many things, and I mostly have. But if I had some money, I'd buy something more durable. Admittedly, I might not actually buy granite: tile countertops are cheaper, and have many of the advantages I'm looking for. I don't cut on countertops, and agree that's bad for knives (I use cutting boards, as is traditional even in countries like Italy and Greece where stone countertops are the norm). But I do often have sharp things in the kitchen. The last time I dinged a counter it wasn't even due to a knife, but because I accidentally dropped a corkscrew. Would've been no problem with stone or tile, but since I don't have those, it caused a permanent mark where the tip hit! With wood countertops I've found myself paranoid about even setting a coffee cup or wine glass down without a coaster, lest it leave stains that are hard to remove. And with linoleum I'm always paranoid that even a bowl taken from reheating in the microwave will leave a ring-shaped heat-mark. In addition to tile as a stone alternative, I am somewhat curious about the newer generation of synthetic countertops. I have heard that modern Corian countertops (or generic brands making Corian®-style countertops) are quite durable, and somewhere in price between linoleum and stone.
tptacek 12y ago
For what it's worth: we just renovated, and we have linoleum floors now. They're great; grippy, still pleasant to walk on, and, most importantly, easy to clean. You'd need to be way, way overpaying to end up spending mid-5-figures on countertops.
- FireBeyond 12y ago
  There is nothing more horrific than grout (and the cleaning thereof) in a kitchen.

tptacek 12y ago

Forget "exotic but sustainable wood" and "artisans". Just put the word "custom" next to "cabinet". Five figures. That is what custom cabinets cost. We were back-and-forth on custom cabinets versus IKEA cabinets. We weren't looking to make a vanity cabinet purchase. We just couldn't get the storage --- particularly the pullouts --- that we wanted from IKEA. Kitchens are really expensive.