Interior
Countertops templated to the cabinets as installed
A countertop is cut once, to a template taken off the installed cabinets, from a slab with its own grain and dimensions, and almost everything that goes wrong is decided before the fabricator picks up a tool.
- Quartz, granite, quartzite, solid surface and wood
- Digital templating after cabinets are set and leveled
- Seam placement reviewed with you before fabrication
- Sink, faucet and cooktop cutouts fabricated to the actual fixtures
- Dover showroom for comparing counter, cabinet and tile samples
Quartz, granite, solid surface, wood
Engineered quartz is nonporous, never needs sealing, and will not stain from wine or lemon juice, and its resin binder scorches: a pan straight off a burner leaves a permanent mark, so trivets are not optional. Granite takes heat far better, varies slab to slab, and asks for occasional sealing; quartzite is natural stone, harder than granite and more heat tolerant than quartz; marble etches from acid no matter the sealer, which makes it a patina material for baking areas and baths rather than a kitchen workhorse.
Solid surface can have its seams bonded and sanded until they disappear, allows integral sinks with no rim, and can be sanded to remove scratches or burns, at the cost of being softer than stone. Butcher block is warm and comparatively inexpensive on an island or a run away from the sink, and it requires oiling and shows knife marks.
Why templating waits for the cabinets
The template measures your actual walls, which are not straight, and your actual cabinet run, which is never what the drawing said down to the sixteenth of an inch. Cabinets set and leveled, then template, then a fabrication window of a week or two, then install, then the plumber reconnects, then the backsplash tile lands on the finished counter: nobody can compress that chain much, so on a Nova build your point of contact starts it on time and keeps days from leaking between steps.
The cutouts get fabricated to real fixtures, so the templater needs the actual sink, faucet and cooktop or their exact specifications, and a farmhouse sink gets set before the template is taken. Swapping a faucet after the template means a plugged hole or a new piece of stone.
Seams, edges and overhangs
Any run longer than a slab has a seam, and a good one lands at a sink or cooktop cutout where the material is narrow and the joint is visually broken up, not across the open middle of an island. On veined material the fabricator can flow the vein across the joint if the slab was laid out for it, and you see the seam plan before anything is cut. Edge profile and thickness get settled at the same time: eased and square edges show the material plainly, bullnose and bevel hide wear, and a mitered edge builds a thicker apparent slab at a higher price.
Stone handles weight from above but not bending. An unsupported seating overhang will eventually crack. Stone can cantilever roughly a foot; past that it needs steel plate, corbels or a knee wall, and the steel lives inside the cabinets, so it gets decided at the cabinet layout stage, before the boxes are set.
Cabinet doors, flooring, tile and countertop samples are out at our showroom in Dover, NH. Visit the showroom
How it goes
How the job runs
01
Material and slab selection
We narrow the material by how the kitchen gets used, then look at samples together. On natural stone, seeing the full slab is worth arranging before anything is cut.
02
Layout, seams and support
Seam locations, edge profile, overhang depth and any steel or corbels get decided on paper while the cabinets are still being built, so the support is inside the boxes before they are set.
03
Template after the cabinets are set
Once the cabinets are leveled and fastened and the sink, faucet and cooktop are on site, the counters are digitally templated to the room as built and the file goes to the fabricator.
04
Install, hook up, then backsplash
Tops set, seams joined and polished, sink secured, then the plumber reconnects. Backsplash tile follows once the counters are in place, because it has to land on the finished surface.
What we install
Materials and brands we work with
- Engineered quartz
- Granite
- Quartzite
- Marble
- Solid surface
- Sintered stone and porcelain slab
- Butcher block and hardwood tops
- Undermount, farmhouse and integral sinks
- Eased, bevel, bullnose and mitered edges
- Steel plate and corbel overhang support
Questions
Straight answers
- Quartz or granite, which one should I buy?
- If you want a consistent look, zero sealing and no staining worries, quartz. If you put hot pans down without thinking or want a slab that is one of a kind, granite, which tolerates heat and asks for occasional sealing instead. The deciding factor for most people is heat, because a scorch in quartz resin does not reverse.
- Where will my seams be, and will I see them?
- Any run longer than a slab has at least one seam, and on an L-shaped kitchen there is usually one at the corner. We put them where the material is narrow and the eye is already busy, through a sink or cooktop cutout, and you see the seam plan before anything is cut. On a heavily veined stone a seam will always be findable up close.
- Can you template before the cabinets go in so it is ready sooner?
- No. The template measures the cabinets as they were installed and the walls as they are, which in a Seacoast house is never quite what the drawing said, so templating early saves a week and costs you a counter with a gap at the wall. What we do instead is set the cabinets on schedule and have the templater there the next day.
- How much overhang can I have on my island for stools?
- Roughly a foot of stone can cantilever unsupported, depending on the material and thickness; past that it needs steel plate, corbels or a knee wall, and the steel lives inside the cabinets, so the decision belongs at cabinet layout rather than at the template. Stone handles weight from above but not bending. An unsupported seating overhang will eventually crack.
- Do I really need to go see the slab in person?
- For quartz, usually not, because it is manufactured to be uniform and the sample tells the truth. For granite, quartzite or marble, yes: a sample is a two-inch window into a slab that may have a dramatic vein, a color shift at one end, or natural fissures, and seeing it standing up is how you choose which part lands on the island. The Dover showroom is set up so you can compare it against your cabinet door and backsplash tile at the same time.
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Showroom in Dover, NH · Serving the New Hampshire Seacoast and southern Maine