COVER STORY
MONT SURFACES:
Products and Service that
Stand the Test of Time
A
by Christy Heitger-Ewing / photos by The Addison Group / design by Tiffany Skilling
s a kid, I always looked forward to the weekend after Thanksgiving when our family would go out to the tree farm and select the perfect specimen of pine to adorn our living room for the month of December. It was so fun to bundle up and meander the fields, checking out all the different varieties, sizes, and shapes of the trees. At the same time, however, the process seemed a bit overwhelming simply because the choices were so vast. Looking back, a tree-hunting expedition pales in comparison to the process of selecting the right surfaces for your home because when you’re talking about a choice that will last for years, if not decades, the pressure to get it right is intense. While perusing countless selections may sound intimidating, if you’re working with the right people, that same experience can instead be exhilarating. Finding the right surfaces for your home’s style and particular taste, then guiding you through that process, is what the Mont Experience is all about. IT ALL STARTS WITH SUPERIOR QUALITY SURFACES Mont Surfaces, a family-owned company, has eight divisions throughout the Midwest and 32-plus years of experience in the surfaces industry. As a wholesale supplier, they showcase more than 400 unique surface varieties in natural stone, including quartzite, granite, marble, soapstone, onyx, engineered quartz, porcelain slabs and panels, and precious stone. When most people think of natural stone countertops, granite typically comes to mind. However, Mont Surfaces offers a variety of the most popular surface materials, including engineered quartz, porcelain, and quartzite, a natural stone that’s different than engineered quartz. “Quartzite is a metamorphic stone that was transformed over time,” explains Kathleen Cannon, Senior Account Representative at Mont Surfaces. “The grains of sand, which are natural quartz, were compressed and fused together turning the sand into a very dense, hard, heavy and compact stone known as quartzite.” In addition to its exceptional beauty and large spectrum of colors, quartzite has a marble look but endures like granite. Its strong, durable surface is dense and compact in its structure, which enables it to resist staining and etching. When natural quartz is combined with resins and formed under heat and pressure, the cracks and crevices between the quartz crystals are filled, and a non-porous, strong surface material is created – engineered quartz. Made up of ingredients that, when combined, take on qualities of natural stone, 3 2 H AV E N
