Cool furniture, design objects and desiderata - Page 103

It's a good thought, otc. In fact, my original strategy was to simply buy a marble top to set on our current table; that idea was discarded for a number of other reasons unrelated to the top. But the cost does end up being $1,500-2,000 for a top in the size I want. If I had to buy materials and hire a craftsman to build something well-enough finished for my needs, I think I'd come out near the Mapp, and well behind the Linden, right off the bat.

 

DWR has a yearly sale, but it isn't great 10% or so. Not sure about R&B - think they just do foor samples or discontinued items. For what it's worth the R&B quality is quite high and they are a great company to deal with.

 

Sorry, don't have any suggestions. Marble tables are going to be expensive.

 

lefty

I know a fellow who owned and broke one of these.

Must have been exciting to watch happen.

I just found this in the trash can of my apartment:


brought it in with hopes that maybe it was real and the replacement piece could be sourced (or a lot of wood-glue could do something)
but on closer inspection it is not real

A lot better than the crappy reproduction I shipped back to myhabit (well maybe not that much better since the plywood broke), but still not real.

There is no labeling or makers identification on it anywhere that I can find. The back is held on with actual rubber (unlike the wooden discs of my previous reproduction) but it is held on with 3 shock mounts and is a lot less flexible than I remember the real one being. I believe the real one is held on with only 2 rubber shock mounts and I believe it is assembled with phillips head screws while this one uses hex bolts.

I´d never go for marble (Table or Countertop). Professional cooks never use Marble because anything acidic like lime or lemon juice will stain marble though furniture stores will never tell you that.

 

That's an original!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not.

Put it back in the trash where it belongs.

Red wine, strawberries, elderberries etc., they are great for baking though.

If you want "stone" go with granite, Corian or Silestone.

Actually even granite will get acidic stains.I´m not familir with Corian or Silestone but theres a reason why professionals use stainless steel

Not as easily though, as granite is harder.

Corian & Silestone are acrylic/quartz surfaces that you can get, so they look like marble and granite, they are not perfect, but they are cheaper and easier to maintain.


There are numerous reasons, why they use steel instead of stone or wood such as price, hygiene & durability, but their kitchens are made to be strong and easy to use, without any attention to looks very much unlike the kitchen in your house, also large stainless steel surfaces are very cold and hard looking, which only works with certain aesthetics.

It's a DR table not a work surface and marble looks better when it has a patina of age on it. I have friends with 40-year-old tulip tables that are stained and chipped by raising kids and look fantastic.

 

Don't put a manufactured stone table in that house.

 

lefty

It does, but people who tend to buy marble tops don't think so and get mad, when it stops looking pristine after a short while, which is why we stopped offering it.


A surface I'm surprised isn't used more is lavastone.

That said, the stainless steel kitchens from Poggenpohl and Bulthaup are both functional and beautiful. I have a leicht kitchen and actually went with an artificial top. It gets a lot of abuse and is cheaper to change than stone. An architect friend of mine came up with a great cheap alternative though. He poured concrete like for a floor into a precast reinforced mould. Once set the concrete was polished. Hard as rock and cheap as chips and looks great

They are both contemporary designs and work with steel, classic designs with inlays etc. not so much.

Yeah I have seen that multiple times and it looks great, when done right and I actually saw one with small polished stones in it, like you do in flooring.

Thanks for the support, Lefty

I'm well aware of the etching and potential staining properties of marble, but it's a time-honored interior surface in spite of that. My whole kitchen is already marble, it has some little stains and etch marks and scratches already and it doesn't bother me.

Granite is highly functional but to be honest, I really just don't like the way it looks. And I really hate those manufactured stone tops. In an ultramodern kitchen I suppose they blend in well but even then they look a little hokey to me. For some reason, I do like concrete, but that too needs to be in the right space, and my home was not that space.

Really, the only other serious contender for us was soapstone, which I really like, but it's really, really soft, and ultimately black/green was not the look we wanted.

Anyways, the point is that I've already crossed the Rubicon with respect to marble, in a much more sensitive area. We're talking about a dining table here, and there are ways to be even more careful with a dining table than a countertop. A manufactured stone dining table in my house would be a bridge too far.