The House Project: When Am I Allowed My Nervous Breakdown?

Because it has taken so long to get to the point where we are ready to put countertops on the kitchen cabinets and vanities--we had to start all over on the decision process about the countertops. Since we started over, we made an entirely new set of selections--but run through the following complexities:

1. We decided that the Silestone cultured granite stuff looked so cool, and it wasn't much more expensive than the Corian ($60 per square foot instead of $43 per square foot).

2. The kitchen and the master bath get the Silestone; we'll use Corian in the other two bathrooms, because it is a bit cheaper.

3. My wife decides to use Silestone in the other two bathrooms--$17 per square foot difference when you only have about eight square foot total isn't that much money.

4. We forgot about the utility sink in the laundry room. Okay. We'll Corian that.

5. Nope. That's below the minimum order for Corian. So we'll use Corian in bathroom three.

6. What's the size of the counters? The builder has clearly the wrong dimensions for the master bath vanities, so we drive up there to remeasure everything.

7. Gee, if we are getting Corian, we can get the sink and the countertop as a single unit. Won't that be cool? Besides, undermounting the sinks we had specified over at Consolidated adds $195 to the cost of the Corian, and the Corian sink included is about $305--so it comes out about the same or cheaper to go for the Corian sink as part of the countertop.

8. But there's no utility sink or even close to that size in Corian.

9. I call the builder from Home Depot, and tell him what we are planning. Then he reminds me that the utility sink is so large that there isn't going to be much of a Corian countertop around it--why not just go for cheap laminate around it, and save the $498 that we would be spending for the Corian countertop and undermounting of the sink? Great idea! Now go back and revisit item #5 above.

I think, if I can ever get hold of my wife on the phone, we're going to do Silestone everywhere now. What we save on the utility sink will be more than the extra cost of doing the third bathroom in Silestone instead of Corian, and keeps a consistent and very sharp looking interior design.

Of course, it is three weeks to get the Silestone ordered up--and of course, that holds up not just the countertops, but also installation of the sinks that undermount the counters. Groan.

I've learned so much from this project. And I hope that I don't have to use that knowledge again!