Solid Surface Countertop Installation Davie, FL

Installed, most Davie kitchens land between $65 and $85 per square foot, with a light matte color and a plain undermount sink starting nearer $35 and a job with a built-up edge, an integrated bowl and a coved backsplash running past $100. The published cost guides and the retailer calculators spread far wider than that and disagree with each other. The spreads are wide because they are averaging two different products: a bare top with a sink dropped under it, and a counter where the bowl and the backsplash are part of the same piece. Inside your band, the movers are square footage first, then the color group, then the sink, the edge build-up and how many curves the shape has. Your zip code is not one of them: we charge the same in Davie, Weston and Fort Lauderdale. You get a written, itemized figure before anything is ordered, and it holds unless you approve a change in scope.

Yes, and this is not a marketing claim. It is a consequence of how the sheet is made. The material is colored all the way through, so removing the top layer of it exposes more of the same material rather than a different one underneath. On a matte finish, a normal scuff comes out with an abrasive pad in about a minute, and it comes out completely rather than fading. A deeper gouge is fabricator work with progressively finer abrasives, and a whole tired counter can be resanded to new for roughly $4 to $10 per square foot, which is a fraction of replacing it. The honest other half: solid surface scratches more readily than granite or quartz does, so you will be doing this occasionally rather than never. Consumer Reports' lab found the same trade: good stain resistance and repairable nicks, poor resistance to cuts and scratches. Whether that is a good deal depends on whether you would rather maintain a counter or replace one.

No, and this is the single most important thing to know before you choose this material. About a third of the sheet is acrylic resin, and resin softens and scorches well below the temperature of a pan coming off a burner. A mark from that is not a stain you lift, it is a change in the material, and thermal shock from a very hot object on a cool top can crack it outright. A hot mug is fine. A pot of pasta straight off the range is not. Trivets are not a nice habit with this counter, they are part of owning it, and near the range we usually recommend building one in or setting the layout up so there is somewhere obvious to land a pan. We would rather say this plainly before you buy a sheet than warranty a scorch mark afterward. If you cook the way that makes this sound like a problem, granite tolerates direct heat far better and that is a real reason to look at it instead.

That question is about one era of colors, not about the material. What people picture when they hear the name is the mottled almond and dusty rose of the late eighties and nineties, and yes, that is dated. The sheets sold now include quiet whites, warm greys, veined stone-look patterns and deep matte darks, and in a finished kitchen most people cannot tell a good one from quartz until they look at the sink. Meanwhile the properties that made it worth buying never went anywhere: no visible joints, an integrated bowl, non-porous, and repairable. What actually happened is commercial: quartz arrived with a bigger marketing budget and better showroom economics, so it is what you get shown. If the material had launched this year with the same specification sheet, it would be presented as the premium option. Pick the color as if nobody were watching and the counter will outlast the argument.

Soap and water, and then, unlike on any stone in this kitchen, you are allowed to scrub. Davie's water runs hard, around 200 parts per million, and hard water leaves a mineral film around the faucet and the bowl on every material in this house. On polished granite or marble, attacking that film with an abrasive or a descaling acid is how you dull the finish permanently, so you are stuck with gentle products and patience. On a matte solid surface you can use a mild abrasive cleaner and a scrub pad directly, take the scale off, and blend the spot back into the rest of the finish afterward if it shows at all. That is the same property that fixes scratches, applied to a different problem. Day to day: wipe spills, use a cutting board, keep a trivet near the range, and do not leave a strong drain cleaner or paint stripper sitting on it.

An integrated sink is a bowl of the same material bonded to the underside of the counter, with the joint sanded out so the two read as one piece: no rim, no lip, no bead of silicone where they meet. It costs more than dropping a stainless undermount in, and whether it is worth it comes down to one question: is the caulk line at your current sink the thing that annoys you? In a house that runs humid most of the year, that bead is what goes gray and then black, and it is not something you clean back. You cut it out and redo it, every few years. The integrated bowl does not seal that joint better, it removes the joint. It is also the reason this material appears in commercial kitchens and hospitals, where the same logic gets called sanitation instead of housekeeping. If you are choosing solid surface for that reason and then specifying a drop-in sink, you have paid for the material and skipped what it does.