My house is not finished yet. Possibly by next week. We plan to start moving some things in this weekend if the locks are on the doors. The edge pieces of the granite bumped up the cost. I think the mason said the corners were $11.00 each. He searched for the largest ones he could find. The other option was to have the mason cut the stone for corners. Then you add the labor cost so it would probably equal. The basic stone price was close to the Owens Corning price. I believe the price for the chimney and interior wall for wood stove came to $7,000. including labor which was a bit higher than our contractor expected. This was the first time the mason had used this product and he was very pleased with the results. He is working with a contractor who builds log homes and he stated he would offer this product. We are all happy with this project.

I don't think we have sealer on either of ours either. We have El Dorado and this is from their website: Can I seal the stone? It is not required to seal Eldorado Stone. If you choose to use a sealer for added protection, use only a silane or siloxane based penetrating breathable sealer. Note: A sealer may affect the stone color and or may create sheen. Always test a small area beforehand. And a similar note on Owens Corning's Site: Sealers are not necessary on Cultured Stoneª products. However, some customer-use sealers do help prevent staining in applications prone to smoke, soot, dirt or water splashing. If choosing to use a sealer, ensure it is a silane based, breathable sealer. Sealer may darken the color of the stone. A sealer may also slow the natural movement of moisture out of the stone and increase the

If this is an acrylic solid surface, where it is solid/patterned all the way through the material, like a Corian, then that is much superior to the cultured marble. Cultured marble has a gelcoat finish where the pattern and color does not go all the way through, and it can be damaged by some cleaning materials and methods. With a solid surface acrylic type material, it can be buffed out to be renewed. It's a "lifetime" choice for your shower surface. If it's a very thin acrylic type wall panel, the kind that kinda "flaps in the wind" it's so thin, then the cultured marble would be a better choice than that. It's not a renewable surface however. Did you not want a tiled surface? With the new grouts with built in sealers, it's care is about as easy as that of a panel wall system.

Not hard, it just takes a lot of time and patience. I did it with ledgestone which has long narrow pieces and had a lot of difficulty getting the pieces to stick with regular mortar. I switched to thinset mortar and it worked great. Thinset is a little messier to deal with, but it grabs much better. If your stucco is painted you will have to use thinset anyway. A small tile saw will come in handy for the edges where you may need to cut a piece to fit.