Marble Tile for countertop

[hombrewdude]

I have just finished putting in new tile on the floor, and installed my new cabinets

We are now looking at options for the countertop.

We would love to have a nice solid granit surface, but this is out of our budget.

We have looked at ceramic, marble and granite tile.

My wife found some marble tile that she likes. 12"X12" squares.

We plan on adding an oak boarder around the front edge of the tile, instead of bullnose or corner tiles.

Anyone see anything wrong with using marble tile for the counter top? this is the polished shiny tile, which we know we will be sealing (tile and grout)

Any suggestions on working through the oak border?

[dadiOH]

Just be aware that...

1. Marble is soft. Any material other than wood or plastic will scratch it. Including unglazed bottoms of dishes.
2. Marble is etched/eaten by acid - *any* acid including vinegar, orange juice and the like. ________________

Like what? Put it on, trim flush if necessary (taking great care not the cut/scratch the marble) and finish.

-- dadiOH ____________________________

dadiOH's dandies v3.06... ...a help file of info about MP3s, recording from LP/cassette and tips & tricks on this and that. Get it at

[Peter D. Tillman]

We have these, inherited from the previous owner. They look nice, but are hard to clean, and are already etched in a couple places from spills. They're maybe 3 years old.

If I were you, I'd use something else.

Cheers -- Pete Tillman

[yellowbirddog]

100% of the people I know who had any type of tiled countertop absolutely loathed it. The grout lines were hard to keep up, and always caught particles. If you cannot afford granite or quartz, at least get a smooth laminate surface.

[hombrewdude]

Maybe the granite tile would be better?

If I could afford a solid slab of granite, I wouldn't have started this discussion...

[Charles Spitzer]

i used granite tile instead of slab because of that reason. set closely, and carefully, it looks good and doesn't have great amounts of grout to keep clean.

regards, charlie

[MC]

an option I am looking into is polixhed and stained concrete counter tops

Anyone done this themselves ?

[sanbar43]

don't use marble in a kitchen as it will etch, by that i mean if you use lemon juice it will take off the shiny finish right away. We decided to put in granite tile countertops. Ours turned out beautifully. Uba tuba is the granite we used and my husband bought rather than rented a wet tile saw for about 150-200. at harbor freight tools. it ended up being cheaper than renting. We edged the granite by cutting and polishing the edge.Somewhat time consuming probably took about a day to grind and polish. We also did the epoxy grout but beware the trick is to have 2 people working in tandem. 1 putting in the grout and the other has to come along behind and clean up the grout. We used baby wipes to clean up the excess which worked nicely! necessity is the mother of invention- make sure you have about 2 boxes on hand.When we put the sink in the silicone used to seal between the sink and countertop squeezed onto the counter which was hard to clean up till i ran into the bathroom and tried some auto armorall wipes - they really saved the day