Reader question: Can I install my own quartz counters?
Hi --I am interested by quartz but it is more than I want to spend. There is Riverstone quartz bought at Menard's which you order direct from the manufacturer and installation yourself at sizeable savings. Have you ever finished this or do you've got any information approximately it? I can not appear to discover any critiques on it everywhere. Thanks.
No ma'am. I actually have never been birthday celebration to a DIY counter, I haven't any records on it and I can't believe that a person's truly selling quartz composite counters this manner. Please reconsider this idea.
Working with stone and quartz composite is a relatively professional change, a career, for a cause. It takes a long time to learn how to paintings with these materials. Setting and seaming counters is as a lot an art as it's miles a exchange and the ladies and men who carry out this work earn each penny they get.
Quartz composites are tricky materials and they're also very heavy. Suppose you go through with this plan and at some point down the road someone delivers a thousand pounds of counters to your house. Then what? Who's going to pick it up? Who's going to guarantee that your kitchen cabinets can handle the weight? Who's going to guarantee that the counter will sit on a perfectly level surface? I looked over Menard's website and sure enough, they are selling that composite material as a DIY project. I see too that they are cutting sink holes. Now my question is, who attaches the sink and who drills the holes for the faucets? What may look to you as a way to save some money looks to me like a recipe for disaster.
Home facilities are constructed across the fiction that all of us can do it themselves and shop massive greenbacks. Well, the truth is most people can not do it themselves. Most people can't diagnose their personal illnesses, guard themselves in a lawsuit, music up their very own automobiles, invest their own cash, rewire their homes, replumb their very own bathrooms or develop their very own meals both. Unless you realize exactly what you are doing, don't tackle a task you can't entire with competence.
A better way to go about this is to assess your total kitchen budget honestly. Figure out what you need and what you want and then assign a reasonable dollar value to each of those things. Add up your wants and needs and notice that it's probably a larger number than the budget you started with. That's OK, because the next step is the most important one. Figure out how to adjust your wants and needs to accommodate your budget. The best way to do that is to talk to actual trade professionals. Go to a counter fabricator and tell him or her, I have three thousand dollars budgeted for counters and I like quartz composite. What can I get for that money? Similarly, go to a kitchen designer and tell him or her, I have $15,000 to spend on cabinetry, what can I get for that? Then do the same thing with an appliance person and a flooring person and a plumbing person. Find out how far your funds will go, and remember that all you're doing at this point is gathering information. Go slowly and be methodical. Get all of your numbers together and your questions answered before you spend a dime.
It may turn out that you can't afford a quartz counter. But what I suspect is that if getting a quartz composite counter is priority one, you will find a way to shuffle around the costs of the rest of your project to accommodate it. Find less expensive cabinetry, a less-expensive appliance package and less expensive flooring and before you know it, you'll be able to afford that counter after all. Budgets are made and broken in $100 increments, so keep at it and you'll find a way to make it work.
Or you can just reduce to the chase and cross immediately to a kitchen clothier and let him or her put together a plan for the whole lot based at the finances you have got. But of direction I'll let you know that. Hah! In the period in-between, top success and live out of Menard's.
All photographs courtesy of Caesarstone