Tell me about your kitchen worktops

[MarmiteCoriander]

What do you have and would you get it again? Anyone have Lapitec or Neolith or know anything about them? Renovating a derelict kitchen and looking for ideas.

Our quartz is 20mm and it looks fine, it's speckly white on white cabinets

Multi-red granite. Loved it at first (17 years ago). Now a bit meh about it.
It's very practical but the colour limits what colour we can have on the walls and it feels a bit dated and 'busy'.

Granite. I love it & would never be without it again

Minerva, it looks like white marble and has been in place for 5 years, looks great still.

Granite. Easy to clean. Always looks good. You can get non standard designed in specialist granite shops.

Denton. Totally heat proof, can pull stuff out of the oven and dump on the surface with no damage.

Dekton. Will be getting it again in new house as soon as I can.

We went for quartz as well, I was nervous about granite due to issues with lemon juice. DP and DS18 love cooking and I couldn’t trust them not to leave cut lemons on the worktop as they do now.

Ours is 20mm, looks great, no issues. So far!

Quartz!
easy to care for, looks smart, reflects the light a bit. Ours is 30mm because I preferred it to the thinner one, but I can’t think why a thinner one would cause any problems. It might be worth asking the manufacturer though in case there are known problems at the profiling and fitting stage?

Laminate. Quartz was out of our budget.
Very pleased with it. Looks great, easy to clean, no problems.

We have a wood-effect laminate. Think it’s about 8 years old and before we lived here the house was rented out so it probably wasn’t particularly looked after but it still looks like new. The only annoying thing is that it was obviously cut in the wrong place or installed wrong because the inside is visible on one of the ends.

We are 14 years into Silestone. We cook from scratch 95%of the time and use a fair bit of turmeric.

DH insists on loose leaf tea and a drippy teapot. He fails to wipe the drips and I think I am beginning to notice the "tea making zone".

We have a tiny chip by the sink where one of us was heavy handed emptying a cast iron pan.

I have no idea how much the stuff costs but it seems fairly forgiving of hot pans/trays

I should have said, by the way... As you specifically asked about Neolith, people's experiences with Dekton are probably a decent guide to what you'd get with Neolith as I'm pretty sure Dekton and Neolith are just different manufacturers' brand names for the same kind of material.

I'd happily buy either, depending on price and the availability of the design I preferred.

I’ve just bought this place. Is there a way to tell what surface we have? It’s white, cool to the touch, stains easily (tea rings!), quite thin and is rough under the small overhang…? It sounds different to the thick laminate that the previous house had. Thanks.

We spent ages deciding between laminate and white quartz when we refurbedtge kitchen, nearly 4 years ago. Decided on quartz, despite it being about £3k more. Been worth every penny. Looks good. Easy to clean, hard wearing. I give it a quick wipe with watered down milton to remove tea, coffee and wine marks. Had some stubborn marks, then realised it was limescale from our water. A few minutes with limescale removed returned it to new condition. I am a bit wary about any long term damage from chemical cleaners, so never leave them on for long and always rinse well.

We have solid oak on the L-shape, where the hob is, and Silestone in a pale white-grey marble-effect on the island with sink.

(Osmo oil on the oak makes it bombproof, and it looks glorious after 2 years heavy use, but I was still worried about the sink).

I'm really pleased with the combination - get the tactile non-plastic thrills from both surfaces, lovely contrast of warm wood and cool marble - it's lush!

FWIW I am wary of things like Corian where you can't strain boiling pasta/veg into the sink because the solid-surface material can't handle boiling water - that makes it IMHO not fit for purpose...

Silestone is heat-proof and pretty much indestructible, absolutely amazing stuff, and so pretty :)

I've had oak & granite. Loved the oak & hate the granite. Granite is very cold to lean on most of the year. Also it's a fragile product with so many micro cracks though it. Lemon juice ruins the polish. Strawberries & other foods stain it.

Black quartz. Next time I would go for a lighter colour so I don't have to keep removing the limescale.