Edge Profile Selection and Templating

The Choice That Sets the Price

Every countertop quote has two measurements inside it. Square footage of slab, which is fixed by the size of your kitchen, and linear footage of finished edge, which is not. The edge is where the labour lives, and the profile you pick decides how much of it there is.

We bring samples of every profile we cut to the first visit. Not a laminated card with pictures on it, actual offcuts of stone with the real profile machined into them, so you can run a thumb along the curve and hold it against your cabinet doors in your own kitchen light. Showroom lighting flatters a deep profile. West facing afternoon light through a Riverside window does something quite different to it.

What Runs Off the Machine

An eased edge is a square edge with the sharpness taken off. A quarter round is a simple radius. A bevel is a flat chamfer, usually about a quarter of an inch. All three run through the profiling machine in one pass and come off polished, which is why they sit at the bottom of the price list and often inside the base rate.

They also suit a lot of the houses out here. The flat fronted shaker and slab cabinets going into inland tract kitchens read cleaner against a simple edge, and on a heavily patterned quartz a deep profile fights the veining rather than showing it off. We have talked plenty of people down from an ogee for that reason, and nobody has come back unhappy about it.

What Needs a Hand

An ogee is an S curve. A dupont is a step down into a radius. A full bullnose rolls the whole thickness of the stone. These take multiple passes, and because the profiling wheels cannot reach every part of a deep curve at full polish, somebody finishes them by hand with progressively finer pads until the shine matches the top face. That is real time at the bench, and it is why the linear foot rate roughly doubles or triples.

There is one practical note worth hearing before you commit. A deep ogee leaves a thin lip of stone at the top of the curve. On an island corner that gets caught by a stool or a hip, that lip chips before a softer profile would. If the kitchen is busy and there are children in the house, that is worth weighing against the look.

Templating Is the Measurement That Counts

Once the profile is chosen we template the run digitally on site, after the cabinets are in and levelled. The template gives us the exact linear footage of exposed edge, which is the number your edge charge is calculated from. It also settles the overhangs, and overhangs matter more than people expect. A standard inch and a half of overhang on a perimeter is one thing. A twelve inch seating overhang on an island needs support underneath, and it adds edge on the side you sit at.

We check cabinet level at the same time. Stone does not bend to a wavy cabinet run, it bridges the high spots and sits proud, and a shimmed correction found on template day is a five minute job rather than an argument on install day.

What You Get From Us

A written number for each profile you are considering, on the same page, so you can see the difference rather than take our word for it. If two profiles are close in price we say so. If the one you like is a lot more expensive, we tell you exactly which part of the kitchen is driving that, because you can often keep the profile you want on the island and simplify the perimeter for a fraction of the cost.

Call (951) 672-3524 and tell us the shape of the kitchen. If you can say whether there is an island, we can give you a realistic range before we ever drive out.