Granite kitchen counter installation is an involved process, to say the least. When choosing countertop material you're also choosing how to spend the days of installation – in your home or outside of it. If you choose a thick slab like traditional granite, marble, or soapstone you'll probably want to escape the confines of your home as the contractors will be ripping out chunks of your island, countertop base, and making a general mess of things for about a week or more. If you’ve got new cabinets to compliment the new countertops then, well, fuggedaboutit!

Looks like a whole lot of disruption.

You have to prepare yourself for the noise and debris and you've got to account for your stress levels rising. What if there was a different way?

During normal granite kitchen counter installation the new counter come into play only after the old one is ripped out, sawed off, un-cemented, etc. This is time consuming, messy, and expensive. During overlay installations the process is streamlined. It requires two trips to your home, but hey, a better end product requires a full-fledged preparation plan. Initially, an installation professional will come in and measure the dimensions of your countertop, how deep your sink is, and how it sits compared to the present counter, if there middle-island burners or stovetops to take into account, and other intricacies of each person's unique kitchen.