Vetrazzo Countertop Installed

The Vetrazzo counter top was recently installed on the wet bar counter top downstairs on our remodel project.

We have been looking at Vetrazzo for a number of years and have hoped for a chance to find a use for it. Once this part of the redesign began to form in our designer's plans, we immediately jumped on the opportunity to use Vetrazzo.

You may or may not have heard of Vetrazzo, but what attracted us was the use of recycled glass and the sustainability of the product. I will let Wikipedia take it from here:

"Vetrazzo recycled glass countertops were invented in Berkeley in 1996. A materials scientist, Don McPherson, pursuing his PhD combined recycled glass and a cement binder to create a sustainable, polished countertop. The company at that time was known as Counter Productions. The production batches were small and handmade, demanding a more streamlined and repeatable process. 

In 2006, a former customer and designer named Olivia Teter was looking for a new project and found the company in financial straits. She, together with James Sheppard and Jeff Gustafson, partnered to raise capital, buy the product formula and assets behind the Vetrazzo countertops, and co-found what is now Vetrazzo LLC. 

The Vetrazzo manufacturing facility was located in Richmond, California in a recycled Ford assembly plant. The plant is on the National Register of Historic Places and hosts the Rosie the Riveter Museum. It utilizes daylight, controls air pollution with a special negative-pressure dust booth, recycles water and hosts a 1 megawatt solar system manufactured by building tenant Sunpower Corporation. 

In June 2010 Polycor acquired Vetrazzo and move the plant back Georgia where it now shares a manufacturing space with the Georgia Marble company."

We were made aware of Vetrazzo soon after it was invented through an article in Sunset Magazine. We were updating a kitchen in our first condo at the time and seriously considered using Vetrazzo on the kitchen counter top. We ended up going with something else but we have always been looking for the opportunity to use it. We ended up going with the Floating Blue color scheme. It's made of recycled glass, concrete, and composite. We are quite happy with the final product.