We are in the final stretch of installing new counters for our #missionbrightenkitchen project. I selected a quartz that I liked in January, but that was BEFORE I saw that Ceaserstone was releasing a brand new beautiful creamy quartz that I wanted to check out. So I waited. And waited. And kept seeing a “Coming soon!” notice on the sample purchase link.
We decided that to make absolutely sure we loved the color we decided on, we needed to see the slab. We made an appointment to check out this beauty in person: 5112 Aterra Blanca | Caesarstone (caesarstoneus.com)
We really loved the Ceaserstone Calacatta Nuvo color, which we were fortunate enough to have a sample of. So we took that little sample with us to the quartz yard and had a peek at Alterra Blanca.
Alterra Blanca is described as a milky white background with subtle movement. I was pleasantly surprised to see the light movement was a brown veining. This is an important detail if the color of your kitchen cabinet or other shades in your space are cooler or gray. But as you may know, I’m working to move away from gray in my kitchen.
We spent some time looking at Alterra Blanca. We also took a sample of our cabinet door and the sample of Calacatta Nuvo we were leaning towards. Here is the Alterra Blanca against our Simply White cabinet:
For some reason, our cabinet looked a bit greenish in the natural light.
We learned that the sample we had been relying on for Calacatta Nuvo was not accurate. It was more yellow and had not been properly cleaned or bleached by the company that provided it to us. We held it up to a small corner of a larger slab of Calacatta Nuvo (they would not pull the entire slab out for us…), and it was quite a bit different background color. Here is the Calacatta Nuvo compared to Alterra Blanca:
We ultimately decided to go with Calacatta Nuvo, because with kids we don’t have the cleanliness that I think Alterra Blanca might call for to avoid seeing crumbs all the time. Ceasarstone told us that they’d heard good things with people using their cleaning supplies to remove marks on quartz. It’s not indestructible, but highly resilient to stains. One other tip I’ve heard from Pental quartz manufacturers is to use these two materials to get scuffs and marks out. It has worked like a charm on our current deep gray counters:
Here are some tips when you visit the counter stock room:
- Bring a sample of what you like.
- Bring your cabinet doors with you if they are the color you like.
- If you can’t do #2, bring a piece of wood painted in the color of your cabinets.
- Bring a sample of the backsplash if you are installing counters in a kitchen.
- Bring the color of your paint colors if planning to paint cabinets.
- Ask the manufacturer of the counters how much maintenance the counters require.
- Ask the manufacturer if the sample of quartz you may have is accurate.
Here are some other cleaning products recommended:
We get our counters measured next week. Can’t wait to see the updates!
