Corian vs Essa vs Caesar

wow nice colour combo....like it! any chance you know what colour they used for this corian top and the laminate doors? i like the floor tiles too

Hi, if you want just pm your email address and I will send you the full sized image that you can zoom in to. Also, I know if you go to the Corian website you can request free samples to be sent to you.

Check out "Whisper", as this is very similiar to what is in this pic, but with a bit more fleck. From memory Linen was another similiar colour.

So I keep hearing that granite can be cheaper than ceasar stone. I will go visit a few places tomorrow and see how we go, but has anyone got quotes on granite for a comparable setup as myself or even anything really?

Hi deeps. Granite IS cheaper than stone, but remember that granite is porous, which means for a kitchen benchtop with a lot of liquids around, ideally you would need seal it once a year.

That's not a big issue for me, once a year isn't a big trouble, so i'd gladly go with granite if it were cheaper. Infact, the only reason I even considered ceasarstone was because I was led to believe it was cheaper.

Hopefully i'll find out tomorrow how much granite will cost

Regards

I have no idea how much the man made stone costs but our granite benchtops and splashback (see the kitchen thread for pictures) cost $9700. This was for a stone which was in the medium price range. The splashback was cheaper as it was thinner

I think that granite is more expensive for a slab BUT the slabs are bigger so you would only have to buy one instead of two man-made stone slabs.

40mm thick Honed or polished concrete benchtops are around the $500ish/LM for a custom job.

Yes - and I absolutely LOVE your granite! It's just so beautiful. I wish that they made stone like that.

Thank you bigdenis.

To clarify, I do not think anyone can make a blanket statement that granite is cheaper than man made stone. Some granites might be cheaper if you buy from somewhere like Gray's auctions but others will not be .Even if you compare only natural stones you will find that different stone suppliers seemed to have different pricing systems. Ours had grades from 1 through to 5 with 5 being the most expensive. Another supplier had only 3 grades. Prices within these grades could vary depending on the stone itself. For example, we initially fell in love with a stone in Grade 5. To our dismay, we were told that just our benchtops alone would cost about $40,000. Obviously this was not even to be considered. Yet another granite stone in grade 5 would have cost us $15,000 for the benchtops. Another . We had to face reality and downgrade our tastes quite dramatically and so we picked a grade 3 stone. We were told that prices are not only a reflection of quality but rather the scarcity or difficulty in obtaining the stone.

Even the same named stone can differ markedly in price from one supplier to another. For example, our supplier does not buy directly from the different producers in various countries. Instead, they buy from Italy where the stone from around the world is shipped and then graded.
This made their stone more expensive. For example, we had a quote for black galaxy from them and from another supplier when we were going for a different look in our original plans. One was 1/2 the price of the other and this was explained as being due to the actual quality of the different slabs - both with the same name but far different in the actual look. So sorry for the lecture but I don't think you can make such a simplistic comparison.

Edited to add that I am not trying to downgrade man made stone as we actually have it in our home also. We had a vanity made for us that is wholly made from man made stone and we picked this after getting a quote for having the same item made out of granite. The prices were similar but the man made stone looks nicer.

From our builder

$4502 for granite
$5822 for cesar stone

Will get credited $2567 for the laminex, which means we'll only be playing $2000 extra for granite

From my builder:

2.5m cooktop + 3m island in Corian = $2650.

They didnt mention anything about crediting for the existing laminate though. Whaddaya think?

Seems a reasonable price - however i'm surprised they don't credit for the laminex (which would have been included in your regular purchase price)

So in essence, we're paying an extra $2000ish for granite, whereas you are paying an extra $2650 for corian. Personally, i'd be trying to get a credit on the laminex, and go for granite or caesarstone.

Turns out it was 4500 on TOP of the rebate..

But I managed to get a quote for $4300 all up so works out even cheaper for us! (less than 2 grand!!)

Very happy with that

Hi jaelee, just a personal opinion on the corian that I saw. The bench top was a couple of years old and just looked dull and... plastic. The OP wanted opinions to compare 3 products, 2 of which are stone. That said though, if I was charged 15K to get Essa stone I would def go Corian!

I got my Corian samples in the mail today. I would stay away from it. It scratches VERY easily. Can scratch it with a hard fingernail (nothing too deep), keys can easily scratch it too.

Being acrylic, any scratches will be easy to buff out, but it would be a constant pain to always buff out scratches...

After having a look at the corian we decided we will go with Hanex, Crystal Vanilla.
Much the same as Corian but nicer colour.

hanex
Edited by a Mod

I got my Corian samples in the mail too, and the first thing I did was to see how easily it scratches....and lets just say that just a soft slice with the butter knife scratched it already....although the white one's aren't as obvious as the darker ones

kinda im dissappointed coz I really liked the look of it, and dont think our budget will stretch to the Essa or Caesars....at least not through the builder. they only do corian, and wanted to charge an arm, leg and kidney if we insisted on the other two.

so my option is to probably stick with the standard laminate first, then upgrade to stone/quartz or granite at a later stage.

Look into Granite. At the right place, it will be alot cheaper than CS, probably not too much more than Corian i'd imagine... Definately look into it. We've had a $2000 difference between granite quotes..

Also, get quotes from somewhere other than your builder

Instead of upgrading through our builder we got credit for our entire kitchen and found a cabinet maker who also works with stone. Because he didnt have to subcontract someone to come in and do the benches for us we got a great price. For 15k we are getting our entire 3m x 3m kitchen built with Essa Stone benches plus a 2m island bench with waterfall edges, 2pack cabinets, soft close drawers, pull out pantry, sliding up section for the toaster/microwave, over heads the whole way around (when our builder was only going to give us 2) pull out bin drawer and heaps of other extras. PLUS we are getting 3 bathroom vanities in Essa stone and 2 pack with feature cabinetry in between AND our laundry in stone and 2 pack with over head cupboards AND a feature cabinet in the living room with a stone bench.

Through our builder we got 8k credited back so all these extras cost us 7k.

Might be worth looking around.