Adventures in finding a local marble countertop

For seven years I’ve dreamed up ideas on how to renovate the kitchen in our 1918 craftsman house.

There were times when I wanted to rip out 1950’s metal cabinets with red the formica countertops and chrome edges. But I didn’t. I waited, and hoped for the day of finding a contractor (and the funds) to create hand built cabinets that match the original character of the house. I wanted to restore, not just renovate.

Keeping in mind the home’s the original cabinetry that lives in our basement, topped with its original pink Tennessee Dark Rose Marble by the Tennessee Marble company, I looked for design inspiration.

The internet, and my Pinterest board on kitchen renovations, are filled with white kitchens with white marble countertops. It’s what I really want.

There are some great websites I have found with real life advice, warnings, and amazing photos of people who decided to put in white marble countertops –  even through they stain easily, are very porous and every single person who knows anything about kitchen renovations looks at me like I’m crazy to want white marble countertops in a kitchen full of red wine, coffee and little people eating marinara sauce.

Here are are few good sites I have read.

Sealing Marble: The acid test – at The Perch House and the follow up she did on it next day showing even less signs of staining.

Would I be Crazy to Choose Marble Countertops for My Kitchen? Marble Countertops Pros and Cons – at The Kitchn. I found the comments on this post, and the links bloggers provide to their own sites, to be very helpful.

Best Advice: White Marble Countertops Pros & Cons – at Apartment Therapy.

After reading these sites and visiting two stone warehouses, I still needed to see more. To do more research. These places stock very little marble and barely any soapstone at all. But I knew going into this search, that I was not their average granite buying consumer.

I always try to shop local when I can. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized I’d much rather have countertops that did not have to be shipped across the world using the earth’s resources of oil – to bring a shinny piece of earth to me from another continent. The big company Vulcan still blasts at a quarry on the other side of the river from where I live – very close to downtown Knoxville. What they get from there is a gray marble, which I believe is a viable option for our kitchen.

The Knoxville area was HUGE back in it’s hay day of harvesting marble from the local quarries. The Candoro Marble Company, now just a museum, is a few miles from my house where they showcase marble that was used to build monuments in New York in Washington D.C. It all came from quarries just miles from where I live now.

While pretty marble from Italy seams to be THE THING to have, to restore a home with, to be period correct, to be beautiful. In 1918 they put pine floors in my kitchen to save money since guests were never invited into the kitchen. Oak, a more expensive wood, was used throughout the floors in the main living area. They used marble because it was readily available, not because they were showing off their fancy kitchens. These were working kitchens. 

The average home owner was NOT importing marble from Italy, where Carrara marble comes from and is showcased in so many kitchen photos I find myself drooling over today.

All of this desiphering about marble countertops sent me traveling down this road Monday morning.

To this place, the Tennessee Marble Company. 

Where local workers still ocassionaly blast marble out of this quarry, forty-five minutes from my house.

I even got to tour the warehouse, wearing safety goggles! Tennessee Marble is not open to the public. Now days it does mostly all commercial work, building beams for industrial buildings and restoration work on exterior buildings made of marble.

After looking at their gallery of offerings online, I called to ask if I could come look at the slabs of marble. I also called Stonecraft, the countertop business I have been working with who would cut and instal the countertops, to make sure they could instal the marble if I found something I liked. They said yes. So I started driving. Seeing the facility was facinating.

On the way home I realized it made perfectly good sense, me hoping in the car to visit a marble yard on a whim.  I like to know where things come from, from my food to my clothes. It only makes sense that I know where my countertops are coming from too.

I like taking the scenic route. Embracing something a little different. And yes, even stoping in the middle of the road to take a picture of a cow who was looking at me oddly – as if this was not normal. But I’m okay with that.

Here are the samples on my old red countertop, and me trying to decide on a new countertop. The 1×1 tiles are samples from Tennessee Marble. One of the three is actually from Tennessee, taken from a quarry close to my home. The other two are from quarries they own and operate in other states, but process the materials at the location I visited near Maryville. The darker grey piece is soapstone from Brazil, and then the white Carrara marble from Italy. The soapstone will become more black after it is sealed using mineral oil, which pretty much rules that one out for me. Except that I like the use of a natural sealer, opposed to chemicals used to seal marble. 

Next I decided to do my own stain tests – using coffee, red wine, tomato sauce and cold things that would leave a ring. I found they all wiped up fine after about 45 minutes. The more acidic foods did leave etching. But I think I’m okay with a little wear and tear in a 95 year old house. That’s what we do here. Live in this old house they way it was meant to be lived in.

I’ll update on the finial choice soon….as I have more to reveal on the renovation front.