[linz06]

DH and I have a long list of upgrades we'd like to do to our house. We have an old 1916-ish farmhouse that was moved and totally redone in 1997. The floors, doors, and doorways are all original and have a lot of character. The kitchen and bathroom cabinets all match, and they are white. The countertop is currently forest green/teal dotted laminate in the kitchen, and white with tiny blue/green specks in the bathrooms. They are very 90's lol. I definitely want to update the kitchen counters and I might as well do the bathrooms at the same time.

The cabinets look very classic... I'm not sure how to describe them and I can't find a picture online. They are kind of shaker style with a border, but the inside panel is grooved to look like individual vertical boards. Anyways, all of the cupboards and drawers look like that, except for two sets of cupboards with frosted glass in the middle.

I want to have a darker countertop because I like how it looks with white cupboards, and we are also switching out appliances to stainless steel hopefully when we do the counters (we are hoping to install a new gas cooktop to replace our white electric one).

What do you guys suggest for a countertop??? Granite? Another type of stone? Corian? I actually would have no problem even doing laminate again because I have never had a kitchen without laminate lol... but the issue is we have one u-shaped section and the long middle piece is too long and the seams are VERY noticeable at the ends of the section and right in the middle where the sink is! In fact, the whole counter is starting to swell around the sink from moisture beacuse of the seam. Heat resistance isn't a big deal - I have never put anything hot on my counters and I probably wouldn't if I could, just because of habit!

So what do you have, and what do you like or not like about it?

Oh and we don't have a budget right now but would like to save money wherever possible! I just really want to decide what I want first. I have googled over and over and I just want some more opinions!