Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Concrete Counters!

Our master bathroom remodel took about 2 years to complete! 2 years! We finished it just in time to put the house on the market. Luckily, we had most of the parts working throughout the remodel. 

Here are a few photos of how it turned out:



I am not going to turn this Master Bathroom saga into a "Chronicles" like I like to do, but I will pop in every once in a while with bits and pieces of it.

When we remodeled our bathroom I had a hard time figuring out what to use for the bathroom counter. I knew it had to be somewhat custom because I snagged this vanity on Craigslist for about $200. It was practically brand new. The people selling it had bought a fancy townhouse that was only a few years old and planned to redo the entire house. A good deal was born!

These are the photos that they had of it on Craigslist. It does not look practically brand new here, but go back and check out those finished bathroom photos at the top if you don't believe me that it was in good shape.




I knew I was going to change the counter because I wanted a double vanity, not a single. I wasn't into the brass faucet. The door pulls did not fit in with what I was going for with my master bathroom redo either.


I am not a granite person. I think it is beautiful and I can completely understand why people go ga-ga over granite. I think of it like this: I like to have art on the wall, not in the fixtures. As you have seen from a lot of my decorating, I like some crazy things on the wall. Here are two examples:


If you had either of these things next to a granite countertop your eyes would go bonkers. I like to keep things simple with the big pieces of my house. That being said, I will have to have a granite countertop in the kitchen in my new house because it was the only option. I'm sure there will be a post or two about that in the future. Who knows, I may become a granite convert just as it is heading out of fashion.

Back to the concrete countertops:
I considered Quartz, Silestone, Corian... I googled my fingers off trying to come up with an affordable option that I loved. Finally, I decided the best thing to do was enlist the help of experts. So, my google fingers went dialing and I talked to a few people from local businesses about what might be my best option. This gave me a chance to get a feel for how much I was going to have to spend and which companies I liked best. 

After gathering all my information, I had made a decision. Concrete, it was! The guy I went with had just recently started his company and gave me a great price. I showed him some examples of concrete counters that I liked:
(I used my fancy dance Paint skills to put this little diddy together for you!)

I am a sucker for gray! And, like I said earlier, I'm into the clean look, not the busy look.

My concrete counter guy told me to pick out a paint chip of the color I wanted the counters to be and he would tint it to match almost exactly. Somehow he convinced me to add recycled glass to mine. I loved it! I had seen a lot of recycled glass concrete counters that had all the colors of the rainbow and I knew that was not my thing. But, he showed me something different- glass that was just a few shades off from the color of your counter so it didn't stand out as much.

Here are a few close-ups.

These photos are of the samples he made. I took a photo of them in different lights.

Here it is installed:

With the sinks:

Another close-up:

Anyone interested in a Before & After?

Whhhhhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaat?!?!?!? How is that even the same space?
I will give you a couple days to ponder that. I hope to see you back here on Friday. I have made another bloggerino-schedule-change. I will now be posting on Never Listless on Mondays and Wednesdays. I will only post on The Etc. Lists on Fridays unless there is something that I cannot wait to tell you!

8 comments:

  1. I love your master bathroom and love that we get to use it when we visit. Didn't know your counter top was concrete...very cool!

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    1. thanks!
      You were here when the guy was installing the sinks.

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  2. Wow your master bathroom is gorgeous! That has to be bitter sweet to be selling your home w/a bathroom reno like that! You did an incredible job :) (I found your blog via YHL Forum)

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    1. Thank you!! You're right... it will be very sad to not have my lovely bathroom anymore!

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  3. Gorgeous!! Your new buyers are super lucky to reap the fruits of your labor.

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  4. So cool that it's concrete! I don't think I remembered that. You shock me Laura...in the BEST ways :)

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  5. I love the vessel sink look and I love concrete counters. Looks amazing!

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