Dream a Little Dream
How about being able to test fit and perfectly top polish a seam in the shop, and then install a locking mechanism on the face of each seam? Slap on a little self-matching seam adhesive and ‘pop’ a seam together in the field like it was a piece of IKEA furniture. (How can you find fault with instructions that have no words!)
What if this mechanism contained a threaded tightening and leveling rod for a final adjustment? I can imagine the companies who produce seam pullers today heading in this direction. (However, they might want to start by teaching the cabinet installers of the world how to use a level.)
The only thing missing would be a machine to get the entire countertop in plane so that the seam would actually work. What about laying down an expandable tube on the top of the cabinets which could be filled with an adjustable, self-leveling liquid that hardened when an activator was introduced? No more tapping in wooden shims until everything was perfect.
Sink-mounting systems have greatly improved, but there’s still room for innovation – especially for internally mounted supports on 3cm stone. Where is the combination T-31/ sink clip all-in-one to make my life easier? Imagine pulling a sink into place and then being able to activate a clip that flipped out underneath the flange. Oh, man.
SALES
I’m just waiting for the sales program that’s able to take a scaled picture of all the stock granites at a particular yard and store them with scaled pictures of sinks, faucets, and cooktops on a salesperson’s laptop. They could take scaled pictures of a customer’s kitchen and combine all the elements together.
So Ms. Jones wants Juperana Yellow with an ogee edge and 4” backsplash, Kohler Brookfield sink in Biscuit, a Grohe Ladylux faucet, and a Wolf 36” cooktop? Here’s exactly what it will look like with the slabs she selected. You want to see what a bullnose with a Shaw farm sink and full-height backsplash will look like instead? No problem.
A couple of clicks and the customer can see their revised kitchen. The salesperson could also verify that the sink and faucet will work together, that the pop-up downdraft will not hit the snack bar, etc.
A sales tool like this could solve one of the major issues with granite countertops: meeting customer expectations. If you could show Ms. Jones exactly what her kitchen is going to look like, no more “gray areas” exist. She could sign off on a printout that goes straight to the fabrication floor. No more remakes due exclusively to “I didn’t think it would look like that.”