Content area
Full Text
Lots of people want those solid-surface countertops that look like slabs of rock.
But when they hear about the price they sometimes react as if they've been hit with a good-size chunk of the stuff.
Enter Robert Bordener, a construction worker and chemical tinkerer who has come up with an alternative that's less pricey yet wears almost as well.
Bordener's Oakland Distributors Inc. is manufacturing KorStone, a resin countertop that's virtually indistinguishable in appearance from brands such as Corian. Sales at the 2-year-old company were $125,000 last year and will be double that this year.
"Right now people either buy the most expensive thing out there, or they're forced to go to the cheapest," Bordener said. "There is nothing in the middle, where we are."
The typical solid-surface kitchen installation is $4,000, Bordener said, but a KorStone installation can be about half that.
Like Corian, KorStone is made of minerals locked in a resin base. Corian comes in half-inch-thick slabs and is cut, glued and sanded to fit. KorStone's mineral surface is only a sixteenth of an inch thick; behind that...