Granite Countertops in Nairobi: Templated, Fabricated and Sealed

Granite is still the default in Kenya, and mostly deservedly

It is hard, heat-resistant, widely available locally, and it costs less than quartz. The two things that decide whether a granite top is good in five years are the templating and the sealing, and both are routinely skipped.

We template after the units are level

A worktop is cut to the room, not to a drawing. That means templating happens after the base units are installed and levelled: never before, and never from the kitchen plan.

Anyone offering to template before your units are in is guessing at the dimension, and stone is not adjustable. A 5mm error in a joinery panel is scribed out; a 5mm error in a granite top is a gap against the wall for the life of the kitchen.

Sealing, and why granite stains in Nairobi

Granite is porous. Unsealed, it absorbs oil, wine, turmeric and, very visibly in Kenya, hard water. The staining people blame on “bad granite” is almost always granite that was never sealed or has not been resealed since installation.

We seal before handover and we tell you the reseal interval, which for a working kitchen is typically annually. It takes ten minutes and a cloth.

Seams

A single-slab worktop has no seams and is what everyone wants. Slab sizes make that impossible past a certain length, so seams are a fact: the craft is in placing them.

We put seams where they are least visible and least stressed: never across a sink or hob cutout, never at a narrow point, and where possible aligned with a unit division. We show you the seam plan before cutting.

What it costs

KES 2,500 – 6,000 per square foot installed for mid-to-good quality, which is roughly KES 27,000 – 65,000 per square metre. Raw local slabs start around KES 7,500 and imported around KES 10,500, but a slab is not a worktop, and the gap between the two is the fabrication.