Countertops Are In at the Hermits’ Rest

Our additional granite gets loaded on a truck to go to the fabricator’s shop. AJ and Ruben discuss the project over the newly installed island countertop. AJ has the cooktop and sink marked in tape.

AJ’s crew works on making a countertop fit tight. Granite window sills look great, and they’ll hold up to plant being watered better than wooden sills.

  Try'na make a dovetail joint fit tight

  Anything I do I know I must do right

  And while the buzz saws whine

  I paint the fireplugs red

—Steve Forbert

You can buy prefab granite countertops if you buy prefab cabinets. If you have custom cabinets in your house, you have to select individual slabs of granite at a stone yard. That’s Suna’s job. I literally couldn’t tell the difference between some of the slabs she sweated over.

But that’s all done now. The cabinets have been measured and the countertops designed. We found out we were a little short on one of the types, and we had to pick out another slab to have enough. That’s a risk when you buy the granite way too soon.

The granite artisan, shaped the general cuts in his shop but brought enough tools to cut the holes for the cooktop, sinks, and so on here onsite. We had enough scrap from the cuts to make almost all of our window sills out of granite or whatever stone we used in that room. Suna knows all their names.