Farmhouse Kitchen // What our DIY Marble Countertops Cost

THE FARMHOUSE

Our kitchen’s DIY marble countertops are done and I love them soooo much (thank you, thank you, thank you Garrett!). Whenever I mention that we DIY’d these on Instagram, I get a lot of questions like, ‘what do DIY marble countertops cost?’ and ‘should I consider DIYing stone countertops, myself?’. Today we’re sharing the answers. Read on for exactly what these countertops cost…

We shared how we cut and hone stone here. Garrett filmed quite a bit of this project too, so I’m hoping he’ll put together another DIY, this one specific for kitchens and including a sink cutout. (Are you guys interested in that?)

But today I wanted to talk money.

what did our marble countertops cost?

There are a few costs associated with stone fabrication: the stone itself, the tools required, and accessories. I broke them out below.

stone

For our Farmhouse kitchen, we bought two 4’x8’ slabs of 2cm-thick marble from our go-to stone supplier in Seattle, GS Cabinets. Ideally we would have bought four 2’x8’ slabs (like we’ve done in the past), because they’d be A LOT easier to move around, but this is all GS had left. They have sadly discontinued marble.

The bill for the two 4’x8’ slabs looked like this:

Material Toal $580 x 2 = $1,160

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$1,160 Material Total

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Just for fun, let’s divide that by the slab square footage: $1160/64sf = $18.13/sf

So the material cost of the marble was under $20/sf, which is really good. But of course, there are other expenses associated with stone fabrication. Let’s talk about those…

accessories & Tools

Other expenses for stone fabrication are below. We didn’t have to purchase a lot of these since we had them leftover from previous projects, but someone just starting stone fabrication would.

$15 stone sealer (we had some lying around, so I’m guessing at the expense)

$3 construction adhesive

$20 plywood (we used one board of 3/16” plywood for shimming plus 3/4” remnants for support under the 2cm marble)

$50 epoxy (for the seams)

$300 Wet Stone Polisher (for honing + coring for faucet)

$40 Diamond polishing pads (for honing and smoothing edges)

$10 4.5” Diamond blade (for Wet Polisher to cut sink cutout corners)

$40 Diamond core bit (for Wet Polisher to core faucet holes)

$154 Circular saw (for cutting)

$34 7” Diamond blade for a circular saw (for cutting stone)

$165 Clamps (general purpose)

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$831 Accessories and Tools total

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Time

Fabricating marble countertops takes a fair bit of time. We’ve spent multiple days on it already and we’re not even done yet (the pantry countertop will get cut once we’re farther along). So you can definitely add in labor expense if you want to count that. We don’t. For the record, we do value our time, but we see labor as a trade-off rather than an expense.

Total

Once we add up the stone, tools, and accessories, we get a total of…

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$1,991 total

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(I left tax off of this equation since it’s different in every region.) Of course we didn’t actually have to buy all those tools, so our third-time-around fabrication cost is closer to $1,500. Pretty good, right?! Another huge benefit of DIYing our own countertops this time around, was that we could remove the lip that comes standard on 2cm slabs, so we ended up with a thin countertop. I love the custom look!

Should you DIY your own countertops?

This obviously will depend on your own skill-set and comfort level with DIY, but here’s our recommendation: if you’re planning to do a few countertops (say a kitchen and a couple of bathrooms) then it might be worth learning stone fabrication and investing in the tools. But if you are only doing one kitchen, then it might not be worth it. At least it wouldn’t be to us.

In big cities (well Seattle, at least) there are inexpensive installers that do this every day. They’re in and out quickly and do a great job. We’d seriously consider hiring them for a project like this (and we did at Ravenna). The reason Garrett decided to try stone fabricating in the first place was because we couldn't find a reasonably priced stone fabricator in our small town.

So is it worth DIYing your own stone countertops? Yes. No. Maybe? On the plus side, you can save a bundle of money and learn a new skill. On the negative side, this is not an easy DIY and the stakes for messing up are high (as in you might have to buy your countertops over again). It’s also not perfect. The professional fabricators and installers will do a better job, so if you’re a perfectionist, they’re your best bet. But if you’re eager to try and feel confident in your DIY skills, stone countertops are DIY-able!

Let me know if you have any questions! And for those wondering about maintenance, we’ll update you guys as time goes on. But in the meantime, Erin shared a great post on how they maintain their kitchen marble countertops here.