Anyone ever have granite countertops installed?

[FreshTressa]

How much was it?

I'm thinking of doing it in my kitchen before we resell. The cabinets are fairly new, so it would just be the countertops.

Not sure if it is worth it or not.

 

[PlutoPony]

This will vary by area but I'd use $40-$50 per square foot as a ball park number on the low end. That would be for a plain edge and the lower priced granites which are fine for your purposes if they go with your cabinets. What kind of shape is your sink in? If it's pretty beat up I'd spring for a new sink too. You might have to pay another couple hundred for sink and/or cooktop cut out just depends on how much they're willing to deal.

 

[mickeyboat]

We selected a granite from Canada - so much less expensive than ony from overseas or South America. We have about 14 feet of regular counter space and a 12 foot curved island. We have a bull-nose edge. We paid $4500, and that was a great price because DH is friends with the granite guy.

I can't say that I would spend that kind of money on a house I was going to move out of, unless the market is such that the house won't sell without them. A nice new laminate could spruce things up.

Denae

 

[EthansMom]

We have granite countertops in our house and I love them!

However, I wouldn't pay to put granite countertops in a house that I was selling unless EVERY single comparable house on the market has granite countertops.

Say, you have a McMansion in a high-end neighborhood -- well, you probably need granite countertops if you want to compete with other houses for sale in the same neighborhood.

If I recall correctly, your house was built in the 1960s. As long as your countertops are in decent repair, I wouldn't do anything with them.

When you're doing repairs to make a house more marketable, you should do things that will (1) sell the house more quickly and (2) get you more money. We've sold two houses in the last 6 years and both times, we've sold each house in a week. What we did: DH went through and maintenanced the little honey-dos around the house -- fixed doors that wouldn't close all of the way, painted rooms that had old paint, etc. We would have repairmen come in to fix any specialty items like we had an electrician come out to look at our jetted tub that had been without power for 6 months. We would also do a major declutter, getting rid of all of the crap that most people would throw out when they were moving. Nothing makes a house look larger than getting rid of a lot of the extra stuff. We would also spend some money on decorative-type stuff (less than $1000 on each house). We would get some inexpensive flowers for the front yard, bought a flag for the front of the house, bought new lamps for a room that lacked light fixtures. We would make sure that each room had the maximum allowed wattage light bulbs and we put electric deoderizers (vanilla) in a few of the rooms. We made sure that everything was clean, clean, clean!!!!!

When selling our last home, we took the kids on vacation for the first week we had the house on the market. We told our agent ahead of time that we would be gone and wanted as many people as possible to go through the house while we were gone. We didn't have to worry about keeping the house clean! I highly recommend this tactic if you have kids.

 

[KimR]

We recently had ours done and I believe it was around $7000.00 including installation.

 

[Am_I_There_Yet]

I have them and I managed to spend under $4k. I found my stone in a liquidation center and found my own contractor.

I love it.

ETA: I agree with Ethansmom. I'm a real estate agent and what she says about resale is accurate.

 

[FreshTressa]

Wow...thanks for the help guys!!

Yah..that sounds like too much.

The kitchen was redone back in 1990-1995 or so, and is still in excellent condtion...it is just not the "latest" style.

I am getting so much advice here..dissers are the best!!

 

[Rafiki Rafiki Rafiki]

I am in the process of purchasing granite countertops for my kitchen.

I've found a local fabricator who purchases slabs, cuts, and installs them. The same style countertop is going to save me about $1800 over the quotes I recently got at Home Depot.

Our cost is $4015, and we'll have about 40 square feet of slab left to do another project with. We would save on this amount had anyone else having their kitchen done picked the same style and needed a portion of our second slab.

We have about 66 square feet. Here's a photo of my kitchen at Christmastime...and is the BEFORE photo.

In addition to adding countertops, I'm going to be replacing cabinet pulls, replacing the old cooktop with a gas downdraft model and adding a wine cooler. We live in a neighborhood that is high-end for our area and purchased our house for substantially less than others in the neighborhood. It just needed some upgrades and love, which we're trying to do right now.

So, I think if I had to judge whether it's worth it or not, I would look on one of the realtor sites to see what other houses in my area have and what buyers are expecting out of a home in your price range.

If you're planning on staying for years and years, do what makes you happy! You have to deal with it every day...and if you don't like it, you'll never be really happy there.