Our company sells soapstone by the square foot rather than by the slab, so we have lots of remnants left over. Some of the remnants are big enough to do small jobs such as vanities, desks and such. As mentioned above, they are great for fireplace surrounds, hearths, and mantles. Many of the smaller remnants become sink parts and we are building more and more of those. Smaller pieces yet are good for stone corbels. I have also played around with pieces at work and made soap dishes, and business card holders. If I ever get time, I would like to try and make knobs for drawers. The stuff works great out in the yard too. Round and oval sink cut outs(vanity sink size) are good stepping stones. Also, random sized broken pieces make a good little walking path. I have one from our driveway to the front step. And to answer the thickness part, yes, you can make the stone thinner. A good cup wheel on a grinder, lots of care, and lots of patience will thin the stone down.

Yesterday a contractor that HD recommended from a list called "Red Beacon" finished our upstairs guest bathroom. They recommend Red Beacon when the job is too small for one of their in house subs. It looks terrible. What a mess. Then he charged me way more than his bid. I didn't like the guy, just a weird dude, so I just paid him and told him how disappointed I was with the way he did it as in the grout lines were to be zero grout line and they are all different sizes up to a quarter of an inch when we agreed on an eighth of an inch. Not to mention he didn't put the tiles all running in the same direction of flow meaning the tiles have a directional pattern on them in the form of veins running through the marble. The tiles vary greatly in shading and he put darker ones all in a row and lighter ones randomly when it would have looked better to disperse them throughout. He didn't even install a threshold and had told me he would cut the tile in small rectangular pieces to meet the door jam but he ran the tile all the way to the entry and just cut off the edges and butted it against a thin metal strip and filled it in with grout. The tile cut isn't cut evenly so it's all running down hill as far as the butt joint against a metal strip. It isn't a metal threshold strip it's just a thin metal strip. I reminded him that he said he was going to do a threshold and he said oh yeah I did say that I don't know why I didn't and just shrugged. I told him I didn't think it looked good and would he like that in his house? He said no. I said what do you think we should do about it and he said that well if you ever have any other work in the future I could fix it then. What? I wanted to say there will never be another time. I paid him the full amount because we were alone in the house and I just don't need to be feeling like someone would do something to me or even say something to me that was really awful and with no witnesses here, he really could do/say whatever he wanted. It was so awkward. His skill level was just not up to doing this very small bathroom. I am not sure where to go from here. I don't want him coming back here. I can't even make myself go up there and look at it closely. It took him 3 long days to do 36 square feet of tile plus the side of a 5 foot bathtub and there was no tear out except for taking up that amount of carpet. I think I could manage getting over what I paid him but it's the materials that I am agonizing over. It was all Carrera marble tile and side splash on the face of the tub and a new Kohler toilet. I am starting to hate HDepot and Lowe's. Something always goes wrong when I have dealt with them and I don't know why they recommend people that don't have skill levels to meet even basic requirements. I honestly feel I could have done as good of a job. He also used three more boxes of tile than he estimated which would have been nearly half again as much as the space. I realize that setting tile on the diagonal takes more but not that much. So he bought more tile and I had to pay for that too. I cleaned up the driveway myself and there was so much wasted tile out there including some he was cutting in circles to place over the open trap for the toilet that smells so bad while working which I totally get but I had mentioned just setting a full tile on top of it as we have done in the past with the master remodel not cutting a custom tile piece just for the amount of time the drain was going to be open. Each tile costs several dollars and I saw at least three of them discarded when I was cleaning up I guess he was practicing on, not counting the ones that were upstairs. What is going on Home Depot?

SO HAPPY WITH MY NEW BACKSPLASH!!!!!! LOVE IT..WE STILL HAVE TO GROUT (am going with white) AND PUT IN LIGHT MOLDING UNDERCABINETS AND GLASS IN DOORS ECT ECT BUT THE TILE GUY WAS HERE FRIDAY AND phewwwwwwww I LIKE IT!!!!!!my husband would have killed me if i didnt... I TOOK THESE PICTURES TONIGHT AND THEY DONT DO IT JUSTICE....WILL TAKE SOME IN THE DAYLIGHT....THE TILE HAS A CRACKLE FINISH ITS FROM HORUS ART THE TIFFany SERIES... IN BIANCO... HERES A FEW SHOTS...AGAIN THE LIGHTING ISNT SHOWING ITS BEAUTY HERE....ALSO ANY THOUGHTS ON KNOBS...I WAS THINKING BRUSHED STAINLESS LIKE THE FAUCET OR EVEN CRYSTAL WITH BRUSHED NICKEL... MORE DECISIONS... THEY NEVER END... BUT ITS ALL GOOD AND I FEEL BLESSED TO GET THE CHANCE TO HAVE THESE KIND OF DECISIONS TO MAKE...

We very recently finished our kitchen and have full granite back splash to the upper cabinets. We had the electrical outlets and plugs fitted beneath the cabs, so there is nothing to break the flow. I LOVE it. The granite is very muted and subdued and light, as it is a north facing kitchen with one small window. It is called Bianco Montanha from Arizona Tile. There is not much information about this granite; maybe it is sold under other names. We have natural cherry cabs. The fabricators say there are two ways of doing a granite back splash. One is to remove the drywall and to glue the 3 cm granite to the studs. The other, which we did, was to have the 3 cm granite ground down to 2 cm and attached to the drywall. We live in Colorado and need the extra insulation. Our kitchen is similar to the one in the photo you posted, except that there is a wall and the window above the sink, so the back splash goes on one long wall by the window and one short wall, by the stove. I'll whisper this, contrary to most GWers I don't like the idea of mosaic or subway tiles in the kitchen, the upkeep of grout puts me off and the nooks and crannies where dirt can attach to. Our camera is in for repairs, so no photo's yet. Good luck with the decisions, I still have to choose pendants and floor tiles, but think I'll take a break.