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After you’ve decided it’s time to place your home on the market, you start realizing just how much there is to do to get prepared.

Before you clean out the clutter and stage each room for photos, think of the upgrades that your home could benefit from. What could make it more appealing to buyers?

Of course, you’ll want to repair damages and replace broken elements of your home, but the next step after that is to complete minor updates. Major renovations aren’t needed, since you might not get the return that you’re looking for. But minor upgrades are always a good idea; you’ll increase the value of your home, and they are a great tool to reel in homebuyers.

The market is competitive. You need all the help you can get to make your home stand out, sell quickly, and get the most value possible.

Worthwhile Upgrades

While landscaping, fresh paint, and floor replacements are helpful, there are two main areas of the home that snag buyers’ attention and create a make-or-break moment for them. The kitchen and the bathroom.

Buyers are the pickiest in these areas, and these two rooms will give you the highest yield for your return. Buyers want modern trends in these rooms that include fresh upgrades—not outdated looks.

A material you can count on to be a favorite among most buyers is granite. It catches their eye because it’s not just beautiful, but it also lasts for many years. If you’ve just done a granite countertop replacement, it’s unlikely that the buyer will have to touch those countertops ever again.

Granite is also a great decision because it’s one of the most popular materials on the market and it has the potential to match any style and color of cabinetry. This makes it easy to swap out your countertops without doing an entire kitchen renovation.

Bathroom Countertops

Bathroom upgrades can deliver a sizable return. Layer on a fresh coat of paint, replace the tub, and install beautiful, new countertops, and you’ll see how that investment pays you back once your home is on the market. Stone countertops in the bathroom bring about an air of luxury and sophistication, completing the room with a sense of elegance that it didn’t have before.

Kitchen Countertops

Even the most minor kitchen remodel can yield big returns, so upgrading the countertops is always smart. It’s a low-cost project that amps up the value of your home and attracts buyers at the same time. If you replace old and outdated countertops with natural stone or quartz, you’re breathing new life into your kitchen and adding instant appeal.

Upgrading Your Home

At Wallstone Stone Countertops, we have the best countertop selection you can find. Stop in to see us today or give us a call to get started on your project!

Quartz countertops are mistaken for natural stone materials much of the time, but they actually qualify as engineered stones. To create them, a blend of quartz, resin, and pigments are fused together and come out looking like the surface you know and love.

How Quartz Is Made

If you’re curious about what goes into the process of quartz creation, look no further than this article. We’ve laid out the steps of the process for you right here.

Step 1: Mining

Deep beneath the earth’s surface, veins of quartz can be found. This natural stone is made up of silicon and oxygen and comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes. It’s the second-most abundant mineral on the planet and can be found all over the world.

Miners use heavy equipment and explosives to access the stone. After they can get to it, they take the pieces from the ground using shovels, pickaxes, or bulldozers. After that, the pieces are sent to a manufacturing facility.

Step 2: Making

Oftentimes, manufacturers will purchase white or clear quartz. That quartz is crushed into smaller, more uniform pieces that can hold the consistency of sand or pebbles. This crushed stone makes up the majority of each countertop slab, about 90 percent, and the other 10 percent are added polymeric resins. These resins make the stone stick together and give it the extra boost of durability that quartz countertops are known for.

With both components mixed together, the nonporous, antibacterial surface of quartz is created. Pigments might be added during this stage to give the quartz a color that can’t be found in nature, or to give it a warmer or cooler tone. No matter the pigments added, the quartz will come out with a consistent, uniform pattern.

Step 3: Slabs

To turn the quartz into slabs, it needs to be molded, pressured, cured, and polished. The mixture is poured into a mold and formed in a variety of sizes, then put through the process of vibro-compression that compresses the slab at a high pressure so that the air molecules are flattened to create the solid, nonporous surface. After that, the slab is left to cure and cool.

After it’s been cured, the slab is polished with multi-diamond head polishers to amp up the natural shine that quartz has. Then the slab is calibrated to make sure the slab is completely flat.

Step 4: Countertop Installation

After the quartz slab passes all the necessary tests, it is cut into the desired shape and prepared for installation. A fabricator will come to your home, measure the space in question, then create a template so the quartz countertop is a perfect fit.

Creating Your Quartz

As you can see, creating quartz countertops is a detailed, intricate process. To learn more about these man-made materials, get in touch with Wallstone Stone Countertops today.

While it’s possible to install your new countertops yourself, it’s not always recommended. Countertops are a big investment, and the last thing you want is for them to get damaged during installation. You’ll probably spend more on the fixes than you would’ve spent getting it professionally installed!

Hiring a professional ensures that your project will go off without a hitch and, even if it doesn’t, the contractor is on the line for the mistakes.

At Wallstone Stone Countertops, we are skilled fabricators and installers. In this article, we’ll let you know why having a pro install your countertop is the best choice to make.

Why Hire a Professional?

Here are a couple things that professional countertop installers have that the typical layperson doesn’t:

The right tools.

It’s true, you could go out and buy all the right tools yourself—but that’s even more money you’ll have to spend if you don’t have specific countertop installation tools at your disposal. Not only that, but these tools should only be handled by people who have been trained to use them.

The pros have these tools on hand and know how to put them to work. You can depend on them to measure your space correctly and minimize the chance for errors.

Installation know-how.

If you try to install heavy materials like quartz or granite yourself, you can do more than damage the stone. You could also cause bodily harm to yourself and others! This concept alone can bring great stress to people, and professional installers take that stress away.

Installers also know how to eliminate (or greatly diminish) grout lines and seams of a countertop. DIY projects, more often than not, tend to have insufficient support (which causes cracks), and an uneven slab. When the pros handle your project, you won’t have to worry about such things.

Going Pro

Installing a countertop is a big job—one that is time-consuming and overwhelming for those who don’t know what they’re doing. At Wallstone Stone Countertops, we believe that going with the pros is always the better option—you will always get the high-quality service that you pay for.

To learn more about countertop installation or get started on your project, reach out to us today.

If you’re considering granite, it’s important to learn all the facts you can about this stone. At Wallstone Stone Countertops, we are huge fans of granite, and we want to share our knowledge with customers so they can make a choice they feel confident about.

In this article, we’ll detail the granite countertops pros and cons so you can get to know granite and decide if it’s the right choice for your home.

The Pros of Granite Countertops

People love many qualities about granite, but there are a few that stick out the most—that it’s durable, low-maintenance, and, of course, beautiful.

Here are some other notable pros of granite countertops:

• It’s resistant to heat.

• • • Granite is formed within the earth at extremely high temperatures, so hot pots and pans aren’t an issue.

• It’s resistant to scratching.

• • • Granite is so tough that it’s more likely to dull your knife than get damaged by the blade.

• It’s easy to clean.

• • • No special chemicals are needed—just soap and water.

• There’s a wide variety.

• • There are plenty of choices of patterns, designs, and colorations. With granite, there’s something for everyone.

The Cons of Granite Countertops

Though we may love granite, we can’t claim that it’s a perfect material. Here are some cons of granite countertops:

• It might look dated.

• • • While it does come in bright colors as well, granite is known for its dark shades—which do not match the crisp, white kitchen trend occurring now.

• It needs sealant.

• • • Since granite is a porous natural stone, it needs to be sealed regularly in order to maintain its resistance to liquids and stains.

• The seams are visible.

• • • Seams will always be present in an L- or U-shaped countertop, though professional installers can make them look subtle.

• It can crack.

• • It’s not likely that your granite slab will crack, but it could happen if you drop something like a heavy cast iron pan near a corner or edge.

Granite Countertops

Now that you know the granite countertops pros and cons, you can feel secure about deciding on this natural stone. If you still have questions, feel free to get in touch with us at Wallstone Stone Countertops.