The person who coined the phrase ‘as hard as rock’ may well have been talking about granite. It’s formed under the earth’s surface over millions of years from molten rock, and it is exceptionally durable and hard.
Granite has heat-resistant qualities, so it won’t blister, and it’s also unlikely to chip or scratch. In the kitchen, granite counters are far superior to laminate or marble. And, when polished, granite has a luminous, beautiful look.
Granite is made of interlocking crystals, the two most common being quartz and feldspar. But a variety of other minerals can be included to make every piece of granite unique. The white mineral you see in it is feldspar, the black is typically mica, and the light gray veins are quartz.
Granite is chiseled, drilled and blasted out of quarries in big blocks. Special machines are used to cut it into workable slabs. Usually, a slab is about 7 to 9 feet long and 4 to 5 feet wide. Other machinery is used to polish granite into a uniform thickness, typically about ¾ to 1¼ inch.
Turning the raw stone into granite counters requires special tools. They can be custom-made by a granite fabricator and professionally installed. The kitchen design, the sizes and shapes, as well as the location of the seams, will determine whether you can use precut, edged granite or if you need custom installation.
We, at The Gallery of Stone, serving the Clermont-Orlando area of Florida, invite you to contact us to find out more about our granite counters and other products, as well as our remodeling services. We’re also a licensed and insured granite fabricator.