Re: Paperstone countertop
A long time ago I was the only Richlite installer in the North East. Installed a ton of the stuff. Consider it totally impervious to water, the local rep kept a chunk of it immersed in a cup of water for years and would check it with calipers every once and a while and zero expansion and staining. It used to be that the top layer was sensitive so you had to be careful not to oversand it, think of it as a piece of plywood with 5oo plys. But as I understand it they slightly changed their formula and you can sand away now and not get any ghosting (as if you sanded through a layer of ply). Paperstone has a lot of problems, Richlite has pretty much crushed them in the marketplace. As I understand it mr paperstone used to work for richlite in WA and split to do his own thing. Some real performace issues supposedly. Both paperstone and richlite use phenolic resin as the "binder" Richlite bakes layers of paper under compression to get their product. It does scratch, it is not a replacement for granite or corian, the customer has to be able to deal with wear and patina (I found it to wear beautifully over time) but there were a few jobs that were sold as "sustainable" replacements for granite that got ripped out shortly after the clients moved in because they couldn't stand that their toaster would scratch the surface of the top.
A long time ago I was the only Richlite installer in the North East. Installed a ton of the stuff. Consider it totally impervious to water, the local rep kept a chunk of it immersed in a cup of water for years and would check it with calipers every once and a while and zero expansion and staining. It used to be that the top layer was sensitive so you had to be careful not to oversand it, think of it as a piece of plywood with 5oo plys. But as I understand it they slightly changed their formula and you can sand away now and not get any ghosting (as if you sanded through a layer of ply). Paperstone has a lot of problems, Richlite has pretty much crushed them in the marketplace. As I understand it mr paperstone used to work for richlite in WA and split to do his own thing. Some real performace issues supposedly. Both paperstone and richlite use phenolic resin as the "binder" Richlite bakes layers of paper under compression to get their product. It does scratch, it is not a replacement for granite or corian, the customer has to be able to deal with wear and patina (I found it to wear beautifully over time) but there were a few jobs that were sold as "sustainable" replacements for granite that got ripped out shortly after the clients moved in because they couldn't stand that their toaster would scratch the surface of the top.
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