Taking nothing for granite

Wagner tells me that it is time to "start thinking about" the remaining details of the master bathroom. I already know that choosing a toilet will be a major issue. The last time I was in Ferguson's picking out the whirlpool tub, I sat on every toilet they had there and wasn't crazy about any of them. (If you want to feel silly, try sitting on a toilet fully dressed while other people are walking around looking at faucets and the like.) And picking a toilet will be a cakewalk compared to selecting a tile pattern and decorative trim for the shower.

But today I'm talking about the vanity top. Wagner wrote up his bid assuming we'd go with granite, as that's the fashion these days and we chose granite for our master bath remodel a couple of years ago, as well as for our kitchen renovation this summer.

But I'm having cold feet about granite for the new master bath. While I love how it looks, if you've been following this blog you know that we are not exactly the home maintenance handy type of couple. (Remember the toilet flapper incident involving the twist ties from a bread wrapper?) The problem with granite is that it is very porous and has to be sealed on a regular basis (ideally every 6 months) to prevent liquids from seeping into it and staining it.

When we remodeled our master bath a while back, I wasn't planning on granite for that very reason. I know my limitations. But when I was picking out the tile with Wagner, we spied a special sale on a granite vanity top that, according to Wagner, had a very good price. The salesperson similarly assured us that this was "an unbelievable price." I'm a sucker for a bargain and was secretly tickled at the prospect of buying a fashionable counter material, so we went ahead and got it for our bathroom, with me uttering (at that time) sincere vows to seal the granite religiously. And when we got the granite countertop installed, the very first thing I did was seal the sucker.

That was, I hate to confess, the last time I sealed the sucker. Months would go by and I would tell myself, "I really need to reseal the granite countertop," but I never seemed to find the right time to do it. (To seal it properly, you need to clean the countertop thoroughly and let it dry for 24 hours, then seal it, then let it dry for another 24 hours. Who has 48 hours where they don't need to brush their teeth?) After a couple of years of that kind of neglect, the countertop now absorbs like a sponge and has a few stains. Oops.

For the kitchen, I realized there was absolutely ZERO chance of us being diligent enough to seal the countertop regularly, so I was initially leaning toward quartz instead. But when I was looking at Home Depot, I came across a special kind of granite called Stonemark that allegedly had received a special PermaSeal process and was guaranteed--guaranteed!!--never to need sealing for 15 years. I had a hard time believing it, so I pressed the saleslady repeatedly, and she repeatedly assured me that if I bought that granite counter, I would never, ever, EVER have to seal it.

Well, that clinched it for me. And even though it cost about 20% more than a normal granite counter, I bought it for the kitchen. Then we got the counter installed. I'll skip the story about how the installer measured it wrong so we had to replace the counter for half of the kitchen (shudder!). But after we got the counter installed, correctly, the second time, I noticed that it wasn't acting like its counterpart across the kitchen or the first top they installed (the one with the wrong measurements). When I placed wet dishes down on it, the stone would turn dark below it, almost immediately--almost as if, in fact, it weren't sealed at all.

This concerned me a little. Okay, it concerned me a LOT. Because, after all, I had paid a 20% premium to get this special PermaSeal granite and here it was acting like it wasn't sealed.

I'll spare you the long drawn-out negotiation with the granite people. Suffice to say they admitted that the sealing was not as good as it was supposed to be, and they are sending out their "reactivation specialist" who will do some sort of special process that is supposed to "reactivate" the seal and make it water- and fluid-repellent the way it should be. Assuming that happens (this specialist handles the entire Midwest U.S., so he can't get to my home for a couple of weeks), I'll be happy. The counters are absolutely beautiful, and nothing else has the same kind of shimmery depth as granite. I want to keep the counters. I just don't want to seal them.

So this experience has kind of dampened my enthusiasm for granite counters. I don't really want to take another chance with the Stonemark granite, and I *really* don't want to be sealing any countertops. So while I don't know what color scheme I'm going to go for with the new master bath countertop, I do know this: It won't be granite. We'll go with quartz or Corian or something solid instead.