Re-vamping the kitchen is one of the biggest, if not the largest, undertakings that any homeowner ever tackles.

Having said that, it doesn’t have to be. You can make your kitchen look very different simply by putting new doors on the cabinetry, and/or choosing different worktops. Just doing that can make the kitchen look very different from the way it was, and it doesn’t cost a fortune.

However, if you are going to go the whole hog, it can be a very big – and very expensive – undertaking. For example, you may want to move everything around and change the position of the sink, the cooker, and so on. Changing the position of the sink means that you have to alter the plumbing, so the floor has to come up, walls may have to be opened up to install pipework, and so on.

Then if you are going to ditch all the appliances and buy new, that can cost a pretty penny as well. Sure, you can buy a new electric cooker from a couple of hundred pounds upwards, but if you want to go for something like the Rangemaster Elise 100 Electric Induction Range Cooker you are looking at over £3,000 just for that. Then there is the fridge, freezer, washing machine, tumble dryer, dishwasher and so on, and it all adds up.

On top of that there is new cabinetry. You may also want to extend the kitchen. This is because in many homes the kitchen is not all that big, but today more and more people entertain guests in the kitchen. Gone are the days of the dining room: many families have a TV installed in the kitchen on the wall. If you are going to entertain there, then you may need to extend the kitchen into the garden in order to make more space, and there is almost no limit to how much you could spend if you choose to do that.

Of course, if you can afford to do all that, then there is nothing to stop you. However, most people have to work to a budget, and in order to make a real difference without spending an arm and a leg you can do so just by changing the worktops and changing the doors on the cabinetry, as we said.

When you are looking at worktops you have an almost bewildering choice of different materials from which to select. There is natural stone, man-made stone, wood, Corian, concrete (yes, concrete), and several more, and they range from cheap and cheerful to the more expensive choices such as marble and granite.

Indeed, many homeowners today are settling for granite worktops in Loughton – and elsewhere as well – because of the many benefits that it has. It is an extremely hard stone and is formed from a mixture of different minerals and rocks, mainly quartz, feldspar, and mica, but also amphiboles and many other trace materials. It forms within the earth’s crust and is not expelled as a molten rock, so it cools slowly over time, and the different trace minerals will harden over different timescales.

The result is a rock which has a wide range of different colours and patterns within it and, indeed, every piece of granite is unique. If you click on the Granite link under Natural Stone at the top of our webpage you can see a selection of the many different colours and patterns that are possible, although you won’t be able to get an exact copy because, as we said, every piece is unique. However, it does give you some idea of the possibilities. You need to come over to our workshop in Hatfield to have a look at some of the slabs that we have in stock and from which you can choose.

Our team of expert stone masons and in-house design team at Marble & Granite can produce worktops for your kitchen that will absolutely amaze your family and friends. Once you have these installed, they will last almost forever. You shouldn’t drop heavy cast-iron pots on them, nor should you chop or cut directly on them, although they would probably do more damage to your knife than it would do to the granite. That aside, your granite worktops are likely to stay in your home for longer than you live there.