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I am curious if anyone on here actually has the Vetrazzo Recycled Glass Countertop in their own kitchen. The Wife and I are getting a new countertop and we are blown away by how beautiful it is. I know that the sensible choice would be Quartz because of the low maintenance and lower cost. Also I know you have to seal Vetrazzo as it is comprised of 17% concrete and binders and 83% is glass which is non-porous. It seems to me that it would be rather easy to seal due to only 17% being slightly porous. I also like the fact that it is rated at over 600 degrees from direct hot pan contact, where quartz is 350 degrees. Besides all that we can’t get over how great it looks and that’s the main reason we want it. We are interested in the "Bistro Green" color. If you have Vetrazzo, What do you think of it?

I hadn't heard of this product before so I went to their website. Very nice. I liked the Cubist Clear, Martini Flint and Palladian Gray options best. If my kitchen were a plain white pallette, however, I'd go with Millefiori. Which one are you considering? Glass countertops were not on my radar screen five years ago when I had quartz installed in my kitchen. It's a good thing because I stretched my budget to get the quartz and glass would have been hard to resist.

I've worked with and installed Vetrazzo. Yes, the colors look nice, no, it's NOT near the top in terms of performance in your kitchen.

It's been a couple years since my last encounter with this product, and I'm going on memory here, but as I recall, we had a heck of a time getting the edges to look nice. Lots of pop-outs that required filling, and also had to use wax to get the final shine on the product.

The stuff just doesn't polish up well.

In addition, as I recall, regular stone sealer - high quality product that was rated for masonry in addition to granite - caused the surface to shed the finer pieces of glass.

If I remember correctly, the recommended sealer for this is actually the same kind of wax used on typical concrete tops. That wax can definitely discolor when hit with high heat. Also, being a wax - you know, hard oil - I imagine it can eventually begin to weaken the grip of the cement matrix on the glass pieces.

I've fabricated several incarnations of crushed glass type tops, and they just always have had issues. I really want the best for my customers, don't want to install product they will regret later. That does nothing good for my reputation, nor for the lifestyle of my clients.

I also believe the stuff could actually scorch, because the cement has acrylic binder in it. Anyway, the glass and cement have vastly different expansion characteristics, which means the surface can be unstable - which means normal temperature fluctuations can loosen pieces from the surface over time.

The effect can be worse when there's higher heat involved.

When working the edges, we had to be especially careful not to heat them up during grinding, because the heat made the stuff really unstable - lots of pop-outs. We typically wet grind and wet polish, but even so, this stuff was lousy to work.

So, I'd take their claims of 600 degree heat resistance with a grain of salt.

Oh, and the slabs are not flat - they tend to be distorted. This means the installer has to biscuit join the material to keep the joints flat, or use a truly structural adhesive and clamp the sections flat for a day to allow that stuff to set.

Of course, the problem with biscuit joining such a material is, the stuff is weak, and there's a risk the countertop will break at the biscuits after a year or two.

This would be because using biscuits to get the surface as flat as possible at the joints, internal stress is focused at the biscuits. It's a devil's bargain.

All countertop materials expand and contract constantly, as the temperature in your kitchen changes. The joints take the brunt of this action.

No material is perfect, but I prefer something with no glass, and no cement - preferably, no plastic, either.

Regards.