Discovering Corian for a Kitchen Remodel

I met this weekend with a kitchen remodeling company, and am too excited about a countertop material called Corian. (The image is not mine but is a good example of how neat this material is.)

The back story: About a month ago, Boyfriend and I bought our very own piece of New York real estate, a one-bedroom co-op apartment in Sunnyside, Queens. The process of buying our home was exceptionally long and drawn out. We're extremely happy now that we've settled in, but there's more work to be done, namely, the kitchen.

I mentioned how we have an oven in our dining room at the moment, due to a whole mess of problems with the way the kitchen is currently designed. As we uncovered layer upon layer of problems and shoddy work, we've decided to prioritize remodeling the kitchen completely.

It will be expensive, and when the work gets underway, we will probably be without a kitchen for about three weeks (the contractor said, "two weeks, max," so I'm estimating three). But I'm hoping that those sacrifices will be worthwhile. I'm excited to get this work over with so we can start enjoying the payoff.

Although Boyfriend and I have been discussing how we want to remodel the kitchen, which cabinets and floor tile we like, whether we'll change the lighting, and so forth, we didn't know too much about countertop materials going into the design stage. After a little bit of research, though, I've fallen in love with Corian, a countertop surface material (made by DuPont, I believe) that's really cool.

Corian is easy to shape, so it can be built rounded or curved. Pieces of it fuse together seamlessly, so you never see any joints if you're building a complex project. You can even design a piece of Corian for a kitchen countertop so that the sink and countertop are one continuous piece.

The color is equally exciting: Glacier White. It's a flat white color, no speckles or natural-stone flecking simulations, but it is ever so slightly translucent... like a glacier. And because it's a non-porous material, it won't (or "shouldn't") stain. We'll see about that in a few months. A red wine ring is inevitable.

The downsides that we've learned about so far include the fact that it's a little softer than granite or marble, so it will scratch if you use a knife on it. But any scratches can be buffed out.