Quartz Countertops

Rob Kircher: Welcome to another edition of Kitchen Designer and I'm here with my friend Jim Gerard from Kitchens By Ambiance and it's a great place. It's located in Bonita Springs, Florida and is very, very famous and you've been here for 30 years. You're going to be celebrating your 30th anniversary soon, right?

Jim Gerard: 30 years. Yeah. This year. Yay! I don't think I'm up for 30 more, though.

Rob Kircher: Well I love this kitchen that we're in right now. This is really, really different. I love this countertop. Now this is not granite, right? This is not a granite countertop.

Jim Gerard: That's a quartz countertop. Quartz has really taken off nationally and regionally. We're selling a lot of quartz these days. It's a great product to work with. We've got some great manufacturers that we deal with. Silestone, Cambria, MSI, Pompeii Quartz and we deal with all of them. We probably sell more Cambria than we do anyone...

Rob Kircher: That's what this is here right?

Jim Gerard: It is, uh huh!

Rob Kircher: Well, I just love the way this thing looks, it is very, very cool. Very contemporary.

Jim Gerard: It is. And the quartz has really taken off. I mean just, you know, a few years ago, seven or eight or nine years ago, we were selling a lot of granite, a lot of natural stone. I mean we still sell some granite, but, the lighter colors of granite are still selling and doing very well. For years the granite guys touted the randomness of their patterns with natural stone. The quartz guys... many of the quartz offerings were just a little more of a pattern that was a consistent pattern. A lot of people really enjoyed the randomness of a natural stone.

Rob Kircher: Get a little better shot of that right there. That's what it looks like. Yeah.

Jim Gerard: The quartz guys also touted longer warranties, better warranties than the natural stone, which is true and it is a stronger surface. So it's a little more impervious to things like red wine and...

Rob Kircher: Red wine is always one of those things that people are afraid of it. I'm a red wine drinker and I tend to slobber red wine around a little bit....

Jim Gerard: You and all your rowdy friends, right?!

Rob Kircher: That's exactly right.

Jim Gerard: Well that's where you get into trouble when you get up the next day and you've left a ring or two.

Rob Kircher: WHAT is this, ya know?

Jim Gerard: If you clean it up right away, when it happens it's probably not an issue. But the quartz guys over the last, I dunno, five, six, seven years, they have figured out how to make their product with a more random kind of a pattern to it. Right now it's red hot. All the national trends are touting it and you can really get some really unique looks with quartz. Like I said, they are red hot and people love them.

Quartz offerings right now are very dynamic. All the manufacturers, have a lot of different color combinations, in the white hues and white-on-white is very popular with some accent colors and grays. And of course you can pick a variety of different colors of cabinetry to go with your floor. And accent that with your counter tops. And then of course your backsplashes.

Rob Kircher: I was just gonna say a backsplash, right.

Jim Gerard: I don't show a lot of backsplashes in the showrooms. So....(indecipherable).

Rob Kircher: That's where you're bringing in all kinds of colors, right to fit your taste and your mood, I guess right?

Jim Gerard: Exactly.

Jim Gerard: That's the eye candy or the song and dance if you will of the kitchen and really makes it pop when you turn the nightlights on and the under cabinet lights and that sort of thing.

Rob Kircher: Well, you know, it's amazing because I love food and pretty much everything I do relates to food and the kitchen is still the heart of the home, right?

Jim Gerard: It is and to that point, and maybe segue into the next one...but we need to talk a little bit about the design process. Picking a designer is a lot like picking a doctor.

Rob Kircher: It is!

Jim Gerard: It's your kitchen doctor.

Rob Kircher: You're going to feel good in it, right? You have to feel good in it.

Jim Gerard: You have to have some joy with the person that you're going to be working with because you're going to be with them for a while. They need to be in touch with what you're saying and how you're saying it. So we can come up with a design that really works for you and is very functional. And it makes you want to get in your kitchen and makes everybody else want to get into your kitchen.

Rob Kircher: Okay. So there you go folks. That's what we're going to do. Another edition, uh, episode (whatever we're going to call these things) of Kitchen Designer and with my friend Jim Gerard and his amazing place, Kitchens By Ambiance here in Bonita Springs, Florida.

Jim Gerard: And we'll talk about picking out your kitchen doctor. Your design doctor.

Rob Kircher: Yeah. So catch us next week folks.

Jim Gerard: Thank you!