Josh wrote: You started out asking about quartz, which is typically around 70-110 a foot, remnants might get you down to $40 fabricated and you can't fabricate it yourself. Forgive me for assuming that half of that might be in your budget range. If you can successfully fight the urge to stand on broken ladders on your countertops, I'm sure marmoleum would hold up fine. The abuse you mentioned would have destroyed nearly any surface. Marmoleum on a counter would not stay looking new forever, but it would wear longer than laminate and look and feel better for barely more cost. You might also find cheap sheet remnants that would be useless as flooring but large enough to make countertops.
Sorry... I wasn't being confrontational. I can get quartz installed for $52/ft. My concern with the countertops and Marmoleum was more because of its softness. I just put Marmoleum on my kitchen floor and it gets its strength from the substrate, but dropping a knife on it (which I did during installation) would be disastrous. I just think with all the potential for dropping high-psi objects on it would be very high.
