Archives for August 2007

As many of you know I’m living in a house that my husband and I are, for the most part, renovating ourselves. Over the past year you’ve heard about ongoing renovation projects and plans for the as yet unfinished or not yet begun remodeling jobs.

One of the areas of our house that I’d most like to renovate is our kitchen. I don’t think we’ll begin that project until sometime next year, but I’ve been making plans and looking at materials and decor while I wait.

I’ve been searching the internet for remodeling ideas and bookmarking the sites with either fantastic products, services or great renovation information. When we’re ready to begin our kitchen reno I’ll go back to these site and order materials or use the information on the websites to help me complete our project.

If you’re thinking of remodeling your kitchen you might want to take a look at All Granite and Marble Corp. This company specializes in not only the installation of natural stone countertops, but they also import their own stones and use a very high tech fabrication process to create custom counter tops for their clients.

They are actually a unique company because there are very few companies in the US that fabricate marble and granite counter tops from raw natural stone to finished product. Just look at how beautiful their countertops are:

The website has a number of videos and photos of their completed projects. They also have a video of their production process if you are interested in seeing how they use their CNC machinery to cut and polish the stone.

All Granite and Marble Corp was actually only the third shop in the United States to implement the use of Computer Numerically Controlled (CNC) machinery. The fact that they use such high tech machinery to create a high quality product means that they are able to keep production expenses down. As you might already know the only other way to create a high quality granite countertop is to cut and polish it by hand which is a tedious and time consuming task that would likely require more crafts mens and would raise the cost of the final product substantially.

All Granite and Marble Corp services the New Jersey, South New York, West Connecticut and East Pennsylvania. They also have two showrooms in NJ and one in PA. If you are remodeling and happen to live near one of the showrooms you should visit and take a look at their finished products.

So what about the actual countertops you say?

Well, I can tell you that they have an extensive color selection. In fact it’s the largest color selection in all of the USA with over 1000 colors in stock. As I said they import their own natural stone from the most renowned quarries in the world and have over 100,000 stone slabs in stock. If you were to visit one of their showrooms you could actually see the full stone slabs that would be used to make a counter top.

Each stone is unique and being able to choose the slab that will eventually become your counter top would be a wonderful experience. As you know granite and marble have patterns and veins in them. By picking your own slab and being able to see the polished stone before it’s cut to fit your counter you can decide exactly which parts of the stone are used and how they’ll be aligned. Try getting service like that at Home Depot or any other home improvement center.

You can save a substantial amount of money when you purchase a countertop from All Granite and Marble Corp. They import their own stones and have an extraordinary amount of slabs in stock so there’s no middleman. As I said they also cut and polish the stone slabs themselves using innovative machinery which also keeps the price of each counter top down.

The website says that their turnaround time from creating templates of your counter tops to their installation is only three days. Isn’t that amazing? You either visit their showroom and discuss your project and all the details such as measurements and so on, or you can visit the website and begin discussing your project with their staff online or if you already have a good idea of what you need you can get an initial quote. Once you’ve finalized the details for your new counters and counter tops they say the process only takes three days. That’s amazingly fast!

The more I look at this site the more amazed I become. I’ve never actually come across a company with such a high level of choice and service. The site is very extensive. In fact there’s so much information on the site that if I were to try to tell you about each feature this would be a massively long post.

You’ll find FAQ’s, client testimonials, videos, articles, photos of their marble and granite kitchen counter tops, bathroom vanity tops, fireplace surrounds, Jacuzzi surrounds, bar tops and if that weren’t enough you can also use the 2D or 3D showrooms to design and create the room you’ve been dreaming of for so long. There’s also a section called 3D edges where you’ll be able to view all of the different styles of finishing edges for kitchen counter tops, bathroom vanity tops and fireplaces. Just click on any edge and it will be rendered for you in 3D.

I haven’t dealt with this company, but their website is a dream since it has reams of information, and I’m left with the feeling that the quality of their product and service must match the quality of their site. Visit the site yourself so you can see why I’m just blown away by the vast amount of information and all the choices that one can make when purchasing a new granite or marble counter top for their home.