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I call upon the over-the-top stylings of professionally trained chef Alton Brown: http://youtu.be/iKkf9YYwmGQ http://youtu.be/iKkf9YYwmGQ ... to explain, kind

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.

_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.