Im about to pull the pin on some new tops for the renovation at home and was hoping some of you have good or bad experiences with the various brands of engineered “stone” benchtops.
From what I can gather, they are made from crushing up all kinds of rocks, shiny ones, strong ones and then mixing them with some kind of epoxy type “glue”.
Caeserstone
Essastone
Smartstone
etc…
I hear good and bad stories about how bad they each are. What say all of you?
They are not quite as hard wearing as stone, but pretty close. They are a fraction of the price of solid stone and a very practical option if budget is a concern.
The look is subjective, I like it. Installed properly , with nice joins and edges , it’s hard to tell the difference, most people can’t.
It’s also less porous than real stone and will resist stains better , especially oils.
Scratches can also be polished out much easier.
Thats the gist of what Im trying to find out. There are horror stories out there about simple things like keys on the bench causing chips, foods like red capsicums, carrots and even curries causing stains.
The flip side is the mother in law bought actual marble and reckons it marks and stains super easily. I think Ill take some foodstuffs to the stonemasons on Monday 
Give em a real test.
This indeed. Its like $400-$600m2 for engineered stuff up here, and anywhere up to $2.5k for the toppest of top natural stones installed.
My parents have caesarstone in their kitchen. It’s been their for 15 years now and still looks really really good. It’s a light colour too so you would see it if it had stained.
The Caeserstone type of tops are good and if somehow you do get a stain in it you can always sand it out and polish it up again, same as chips, you can cut & replace it without seeing a join. Not that they’re regular occurrences but it’s good to know you can work with the stuff if you need to.
Years ago dad had a kitchen company & we used to pump out about 15 kitchens a day. Those type of tops have been the way to go for 25+ years, it all started years ago with the introduction of “Corian tops” by Dupont.
Man made stone is
-Easier to work with.
-Cheaper than stone or marble
-Less porous
-More hygienic
-Easier to maintain or repair
Righto then. Thanks for the info fellas. The mother in law insisted (insisted) on real marble for her kitchen renovation in Melbourne and her daughter mentioned it was a pain in the ass to look after, marked really really easily. I thought being natural it would be better.
Now I know better
Stone is awesome, flat, can put hot stuff straight on it, wipes clean so can make a mess pretty hard to damage