Honed v. Polished Marble: A Tale of Two Countertops

For months I’ve been looking forward to the arrival our new marble countertops. If you’ve seen my master bath, you know I have a thing for marble, and the kitchen wasn’t about the be spared. Marble counters were a core piece of the design, and style-wise, one of the only non-negotiables on our list. 

One of our Imperial Danby marble slabs in the warehouse with one of our cabinet doors. Danby marble is quarried in Vermont, and it's the same marble used in Arlington National Cemetery. Who doesn’t like cemetery marble?

We’d been warned about using marble in the kitchen. It’ll stain, we were told. It’ll etch, they said. Don’t think about putting anything acidic near your counters, they all cried.

What all of these warnings assume, however, is that we wanted FANCY marble. Immaculate marble. Shiny marble that screams I’m luxurious, bitches.

I do not want that kind of marble. 

I want marble that shows signs of life. Countertops where we roll out pasta and pour flights of wine for our friends. I once went to a photo shoot at a home that had stunning, polished white Carrara marble counters; they shone like mirrors. The homeowners kept sheets of clear Plexiglass on the countertops, and we were under strict instructions not to place ANYTHING ACIDIC within splashing distance of the kitchen counters. No vinegar, juice, or even mayonnaise.

That’s just stupid. I'm not going to let stupid stand between me and my lovely, liveable marble. Do you think all of those Parisian brasseries and East Coast oyster bars refuse to serve white wine or lemon vinaigrette because it might leave a mark on their white marble countertops? No. They wipe up the mess, dim the lights, and ask you if you’d like another Chenin Blanc. 

One of the inspirations for our kitchen design: the bar at Boston’s Neptune Oyster. Source: Haute Living

Call the marble police, but I’m going to (gasp) cook things in my kitchen. We’re going with honed marble rather than polished, as it’s what we’ve seen and loved at bars and restaurants. The finish is flat rather than mirror-shiny, so there’s less reason to worry about visible damage. And after we chose Imperial Danby white marble for its warm tones and consistent veining, which would help camouflage any marks, we were happy to learn that it has a much lower absorption rating than other white marbles (and even some granites), making it less prone to staining.

Even if we do stain the counters, there are fixes. You can make a poultice to draw out grease, or you can use this Comet trick to lift the stains. The Kitchn has a great post on the realities of living with marble, if you can take a relaxed approach to it.

So. I woke up with butterflies yesterday morning, knowing our cut counters would arrive at 7 a.m. The truck pulled up, we opened the double doors, and I stood back. I admired the heft. And I watched as they lay the gleaming sink counter into place.

Gleaming. 

Fuck. 

My countertops were polished.

How did this happen? When we picked out our slabs at Boston Granite Exchange, we noted that each slab had two finishes: It was polished on one side, honed on the other. The fabricator, assuming we were luxurious, bitches, cut our template on the polished side. It was an honest, and understandable, mistake. We’re pretty fabulous people (heh).

There may have been some yelling (mostly by Dave) when we realized what had gone wrong. We were also unimpressed with the rounded corners they cut for our square sinks. But luckily, countertops can be refinished, and the fabricator thinks he can try for a tighter cut on the sink edges. So after much stink-raising, our precious marble went back onto the truck. Our faucets, range, and and appliance-garage cabinets will have to wait until next week to be installed, after the counters are set.

And once they are, I’m pouring a goddamn glass of white wine and setting it on the kitchen island. 

Where to Place Cabinet Hardware

It’s a big week for our kitchen renovation. The herringbone floor tile was finished, our appliances arrived, countertops are about to be delivered, and our tiny closet of a powder room was wallpapered. Soon our plumbing and light fixtures will be installed. Everything’s coming together.

But there’s one thing that’s keeping me up at night (meaning I’ve conducted furious midnight image searches on Houzz to ease my mind): Where to place the cabinet hardware.

This might seem strange to other people. I assume that choosing a style is the hardest part for most folks. But I quickly zeroed in on a combination of knobs and bar pulls in a dreamy rose-gold satin finish. After falling for all of the copper and rose gold I had seen at recent home-decor markets, I wanted to incorporate the warm-metal trend in a way that felt fresh, yet stayed true to the traditional styling of the home. 

I think these babies feel spot-on for the space:

Hickory Hardware Cottage Knob in Satin Rose Gold

Hickory Hardware Cottage Bar Pull in Satin Rose Gold

Once you’ve picked your pieces, all you have to do is attach them, right?

Ha. Ha. Haaaaaaa.

While it’s true that there’s no RIGHT way to install hardware, there are GOOD ways to install hardware and a lot of NOT AS GOOD ways. Hence the midnight Googling: When you've just spent an arm and three legs on great cabinetry, the last thing you want to do is to muck it all up with a poorly placed knob.

Take, for instance, the time my husband put cup pulls on our kitchen drawers, and spaced them like this:

Source: Domino

“What?” he shrugged when he heard me groan. “Each bin pull is equidistant from the top of each drawer.”

“They look like file cabinets!” I shouted. “I’m putting Tupperware in there, not my tax returns!”

That was in our old condo. I’ll be calling the hardware shots this time around.

I started with the knobs. Our cabinet installer, Pat, told me that most people just center the knob between the rail and the stile of the cabinet door. Like this:

But the more pictures I looked at, the funnier that looked to me. The knob just looks like a postage stamp on the corner of the cabinet door--a functional afterthought, not a part of the design. 

Installed much farther down, on the other hand, the wee knobs remind me of tiny doorknobs. Personally, I'd get tired of bending this far down to open the lower cabinets:

Source: Britten Interiors

After a day of dithering, I settled on a knob placement like this, centered on the top line of the inset panel:

So much better, right? This shot from Traditional Home sealed the deal. The knobs on the sink cabinet just look natural. 

Source: Traditional Home

On the cabinets with drawers, I’ve chosen to use a single 3 ¾ inch pull rather than mixing up a bunch of different sizes. I like the consistency of a uniform size, and it feels pleasantly old-fashioned to me. It reminds me of how people used to buy house parts out of the Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalog, when they didn't have a million custom options from which to choose. (Did you know people did that? You could order anything, from newel posts and stair rails to windows and lights. A lot of the “unique” and “historic” details people swoon over in late-1800s houses were purchased via mail-order.)  

The pulls will be centered on the drawer faces. A few of our cabinets have a combination of wide and narrow drawers, so I’m doing two pulls on the wide drawers, stacked directly below the pulls above, like this:

Our kitchen island cabinets. 

It looks like a dresser, right? Which leads me to a rule of thumb for cabinet hardware on drawers, whether you're choosing knobs, cups, or bar pulls: Put the hardware where it'd be if it were on a piece of furniture. It will always look more natural and feel more intuitive. You won't need to train your brain to open and close the drawers--your hands will know where to go.

Here's a sneak peek at what we're calling the "appliance wall," since we will be hiding our coffee machines and microwave in those garage-style cabinets. (They're protruding because they can't be installed until the interior countertops go in.) 

You won't believe what we're packing into this single wall: a pantry, beverage fridge, broom closet, and more. Lots of cabinets. Lots of knobs and pulls. I can't wait. 

My Secret Addiction: Herringbone Tile

Well, it’s a secret until you step foot in my house: Like hoarding, or a deep love of curry, this addiction is kind of hard to hide from your houseguests. Unlike those weirdos on TLC, however, I don’t want to do anything disturbing to my herringbone tile—I just want to stare at it. And maybe kiss it from time to time, after the cleaners come.

It started in the master bathroom, circa 2013. My husband and I—well, our contractor, Arthur, and his team—were gutting our only bathroom and an adjacent closet to create one larger master bath. I knew I wanted a glass-enclosed shower, which would allow you see clear through to the far wall when entering the room. That meant we’d need a floor tile that would work both inside and outside the shower, because I didn't want to visually split the room by switching flooring materials halfway through. And I wanted a pattern that would help guide the eye forward and make the room feel as deep as possible. Sure, we were gaining several feet by taking over a closet, but we still live in the city. Every (perceived) inch counts. 

Enter herringbone. I fell in love with these babies at a local showroom, Tile Showcase, and that was that.

Source: Tile Showcase

Each tile on the sheet is 1-inch by 2-inch polished white Carrara marble. Though polished tile is generally a no-no in showers due to the slipping hazard they create, mosaic tiles are the exception. Once they’re installed with grout, the floor has a nice grip to it. 

Seven months pregnant and cozying up to the new bathroom tile sample.

Here's how they look in the master bath today. We went with a soft gray grout, which hides dirt a little better than white, but isn't so dark as to give things an industrial edge.

Pleasant surprise: This pattern offers great camouflage for dirt. There are probably three lost contact lenses and an earring backing in this picture.

But I couldn’t stop there. A year later, we were deep into our next project: outfitting our house’s garden level with a new bedroom, bath, hallway, and mudroom. (To those of you who don’t live like us groundhogs in Boston, a garden level is a half-sunken basement that usually walks out to a small garden in the back of the house.) It wasn’t long before herringbone began calling to me again.

Meeeee. Pick meeee. Image via Pinterest

I loved the look above as a counterpoint to all the heart pine flooring in the house, and I love the idea of a dark tile in areas than can get a little grimy. I selected a similar tile size to the one shown, only instead of slate I opted for basalt, a hard volcanic stone. It has the same charcoal color as slate, but with a more consistent look from tile to tile.

We put it in the garden-level bathroom. We put it in the new mudroom. And now, another year later, it's getting installed in the kitchen, too:

Stay tuned for the full kitchen reveal... in Kodachrome!

I think that's every surface of our home NOT already covered in hardwood. So I'm probably done putting herringbone on my floors.

Probably.