The one when I broke the travertine.

You know how every Friends episode is titled “The one when…” or “The one where…” so when you’re trying to decide which Friends episode you want to watch on the DVD you have a vague idea of what each episode is about due to the absence of clever titles? Well here I am, dear reader, giving you a break from my wit and choosing simply to tell you about what happened. This entry is aptly titled “The one when I broke the travertine” because this is the entry about the time I ate carrot cake for breakfast. No, not really. This entry is about the time I broke the travertine, and it is titled as such because I am sleep deprived (remember I have an infant- give me a pass, will you?)

In making the “canvas,” one of the big decisions was choosing the countertops for the main bathroom and the kitchen, which we had completely gutted. We’d already found the cabinet for the main bathroom (see ‘You’re so vain.’) and settled on a color for the kitchen cabinets, so we needed to select a granite. Easy-peasy, right?

It turns out that there aren’t too many variations of granite out there if you’re trying to stay on a budget, so finding the style of granite for the kitchen (Santa Cecelia) and bathroom vanity (Ornamental Giallo) wasn’t a big deal. It was picking the exact slabs that was a little more tricky.

The most fun part of choosing granite is being in the warehouse of a granite fabricator and having the opportunity to lay your hands on the exact piece(s) of granite that will be in your home. These pieces are heavy, and while I am a former aerobics instructor, when I say heavy I mean HEAVY. They basically have to get a guy with a special forklift to move the pieces- not joking. While deciding on the right pieces of Santa Cecelia and Ornamental Giallo, I saw a piece of travertine that I fell in love with.

Now you have to understand that travertine is a lot more porous than granite, which makes it a poor choice for children’s bathrooms (like our main bath). Seriously, our kids have purple soap and green mouthwash. On granite, those things spill and you wipe them up with a towel. On travertine, however, these liquids would soak in, and we’d be left with a stained countertop for the rest of time. What to do- do we just threaten our youngsters within an inch of their lives?

But the travertine was so pretty! I seriously considered just disowning the children if they messed up the travertine. But they’re so cute. Maybe we could bribe them? Ultimately it dawned on me that if anyone was going to screw up the travertine, it would probably be ME.

As I stood there looking at the gorgeous sand-tone of the travertine I admired, I put my hand on it and, like we used to do with CDs in record stores, flipped it from one side to another. It’s important for you to understand I do not have some kind of secret superhero strength, but since travertine is more porous than granite, it is also lighter- but not much. When I flipped it from one side to the other it landed with a CRASH and broke- right down the middle.

Oops.

Rhett hung his head. The slack-jawed salesgirl stuttered something along the lines of “Um, oh gosh, it’s okay…um…let’s see…glad you got your hand out in time.” Rhett was so embarrassed he probably had wished my hand had been caught between the two slabs of rock.

Needless to say, the travertine slab I liked was no longer an option. And that, my friends, was how we ended up with a granite countertop in the main bath.