The Ace blog

Money

• What a countertop really costs (and where the mystery fees hide)
• How to read a countertop quote — ours or anybody else's

Choosing the material

• Quartz vs. Granite: the honest pick for a working kitchen
• Pick the slab, not the sample
• Choosing a countertop color you will still like in ten years

How the job actually runs

• Where your seams will go, and why we say so before you sign
• Template day: the decisions to make before we bring the laser
• Thirteen edge profiles, and what each one actually changes

Living with it

• Sealing: who needs it, how often, and the twenty-minute test that decides

Opinions, mostly — the stuff that does not fit a neutral guide. Which materials we would put in our own kitchens, what a quote should look like, and the occasional shop story. For the reference material, the guides section is the deep end.

Browse the guides →

Most of this library went up on the same day, and we are not going to pretend otherwise by backdating it. We had two thin posts and a lot of things we say out loud at kitchen tables every week, so we sat down and wrote them.

From here the plan is two posts a month, and the queue is whatever we got asked most that month — which is how the ones above got picked. If there is a question you cannot get a straight answer to anywhere, send it to us and it will probably become the next one.

For the reference material rather than the opinions, the 66 guides are the deep end.

Browse the guides · Send us the question