How Does Natural Granite Become a Kitchen Countertop?

Nothing has the look and feel of granite countertops. Both elegant and durable, natural granite is the most popular choice of material for upgrading kitchens. Granite is very easy to maintain as well, so even after years of service, the stone will retain the same luxurious appearance as the day you bought it. But what is it that makes granite so attractive and reliable? If you’re considering installing granite countertops in Suwanee, here’s a quick look at the process that takes granite from nature to your home.

Straight from the Quarry

Granite has to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is a stone quarry. When granite is extracted from the earth, it’s done in blocks of solid stone weighing 40,000 pounds. Granite has been used as a building material for thousands of years, so geologists know exactly what kind of qualities it has to have to be suitable in construction. The use of explosives, drilling, and cutting with diamond wire cables are some of the processes used to extract the desired granite so that it is perfectly suitable as a building material.

Cutting It Down to Size

For the purposes of building a granite countertop, a 40,000-pound block of stone doesn’t do much good, so the granite must be reduced to more manageable pieces. At a processing facility, the granite slab is cut into thin sections with the use of a “gang saw”: a huge saw that looks similar to a bread slicer. After the slab is cut into several slices with the gang saw, the granite is moved into a polishing line where the stone begins to resemble the material we’re used to seeing at warehouses. At the warehouses, they can organize the slabs by color and texture, so buyers can determine which type of granite works best for their countertops.

When you shop for discount granite counters in Suwanee, you know that granite didn’t just appear that way overnight. It requires millions of years of development, and thousands of man-hours of work for raw stone to be transformed into beautiful granite countertops.