We recently bought a house on Sanibel Island (Florida, USA) and we love it but it needs a little help.

In comes the Braden’s!

This seems to be our specialty. We see beauty where others don’t. This house was on the market for quite a while before we bought it. We weren’t quite sure why because it didn’t need that much renovating (nor did it have any structural issues) so we can only think it was meant for us.

Our first major project starts with the bathroom and kitchen countertops. We loved the color of the countertops in this house, BUT they had not been well cared for over the last 10 years (we luckily had the receipt from the seller for the countertops so we knew when they were installed and what type of material they were).

They were scratched and stained but we really liked them and we knew brand new stone countertops would cost $10,000 or more. I contemplated trying to figure out how to refinish them ourselves, but I really was scared of totally messing them up. So, my husband and I researched and researched until we found someone that could do it for us: The Surface Surgeon (a Florida based company).

We sent them photos of the countertops and they gave us an estimate, which was exactly what we hoped for. Total for two large kitchen countertops (Quartz) and one large bathroom countertop (made out of Corian): $995. Compared to the cost of brand new countertops, in our opinion, this was a great price!

They weren’t sure they could get out all the marks, but they knew they would make them look a lot better. We were fine with this. I knew anything would be better than the condition they were in.

The day of their service all we had to do is make sure our countertops were cleared off.

They arrived on time, sanded and polished for about 5 hours, caulked the joints and seams, and were done. I was expecting a huge amount of dust (so I covered all our furniture around the service areas) but the process did not produce very much at all. I had to lightly dust afterwards, but it was nothing compared to drywall dust (which I’ve dealt with on other projects and drywall dust is messy!).

Things we learned from the Surface Surgeon:

Quartz burns! It’s made out of resin and quartz and if you set hot pans/toaster ovens/air fryers, etc. onto the surface continuously, it will burn. While they couldn’t remove the burn marks, they made them look much better.
White quartz stains VERY easily…..we would never choose plain white quartz countertops in the future
Corian rocks! The bathroom counter had some sort of chemical “burn” on it as well as lots of scratches, but he was able to sand and polish them completely off.
Countertop resurfacing is definitely cost efficient
Granite or Corian are better countertops than quartz. When it’s eventually time to replace the countertops, we would not use quartz
It’s not as messy as you’d think
You don’t need harsh chemicals to clean stone countertops. Simple dish soap and water will do the trick

If you don’t live in the Florida area, do a Google search for “countertop restoration” in your area if you are interested in getting this process done. If anything, the process will make your countertops shiny and look almost brand new once again. Stone countertops lose luster over the years naturally, but they do not always have to be replaced. We’re glad we tried resurfacing and hope this helps anyone interested!

Here’s our short YouTube video review of the process OR click this link to watch in on our YouTube channel “Carolyn Braden”:

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