"SMS" wrote in message
...
tiny dancer wrote:

Thanks for your opinion. It's back to the drawing board for me on
sink/countertop choice. The only thing I know for sure is I want one
large
sink rather than the double sink. I want something I can fit very large
pots/pans into, like the turkey pan tomorrow. And I'd like a
brushed
nickle faucet. Here the granite appears to be quite a bit more
expensive
than the other choices. I want to say it ran around 90 some dollars a
square foot. Where as the Corian I believe started in the forty dollar
range.

In the SF Bay area, granite is far less expensive than the synthetics,
such as Corian. There is a tremendous amount of granite from China
coming in now, and a great many Asian-owned stores competing in the
granite business.


I wish we had available your choices. We are in the southeast, and live in
an area where 'do it yourself-ing' isn't very widespread. When we first
moved here from the Midwest, there was only one hardware store. Since we've
been here things have improved 100 %, but it's still hard to find places,
other than the large stores like Home Depot or Lowes, that will deal with
customers who aren't contractors. Of course for the counter tops we will go
with professional installation. But my husband and I enjoy doing things
like tileing ourselves. We had a contractor do one of our bathrooms, and
then did the master bath ourselves a few years later. We really love the
bathroom we did. The contractor's is just so/so. My husband wants to do it
over himself. Another thing we've found here is that although someone comes
out and gives you an estimate, many times the crew he sends out to do the
job appear to be day-laborers.

td