Granite is an ideal material for your kitchen countertops.

It is heat, scratch and chemically resistant.

But not all countertops are created equally.

As with any custom work, different contractors can go about doing the work in different ways. The difference in the end is quality and cost and as with most things in life, you get what you pay for.

It is important to know that labour can account for a significantly greater portion of your countertop price than the actual material selection.

You need to be aware that slabs typically come in 2 and 3 cm thicknesses.

Your countertops can be made 2, 3, 4, or 6 cm thick.

4 and 6 cm thickness is done by laminating the front edge with a "build up" strip from the slab.

Good lamination requires skill and experience as well as good epoxy based adhesives.

Instile actually uses an superior adhesive which takes about 2 hours to cure but it is much stronger than faster drying adhesives and it can be applied much thinner to created a very fine and nearly invisible joint.

Whenever possible, we also cut the build up strips directly from where they will be joined as a book match next to the counter rather than simply cutting a bunch of strips from any place on the slab.

This is all part of careful planning of how the slabs will be cut to achieve the best look.

This usually means wasting a bit more material but the end result is far superior.

We also plan very carefully where we will put any necessary seams and we try to minimize both the size and quantity of seams.

This entire quality approach to engineering your countertops starts from careful templating of your kitchen cabinets to a professional installation is part of the philosophy of Instile to surpass your expectations.

Our uniformed and highly experienced Terraforme certified installers will take great care in all aspects of your custom fabrication work including clean up.

It is important that you choose your exact slabs and understand exactly how your counters will be cut and finished so there is no surprises.

Check competitive quotes very carefully to make sure you are comparing the same work is being done.

Proper pricing needs to take all these things into consideration so be careful about contractors that can give you a linear price over the phone if you are interested in the best possible results.