I got a note someone had commented on this old post. Interesting to read the old 'news.' It is kind of interesting to read the comments people made regarding patience and being 'nice' to suppliers. I tend to give people one chance, then invoke the nuclear option. I learned way back you get what you accept and hold people accountable to their word. Probably a USMC thing. Ya'know, bring a gun to a knife fight, bring a bigger gun to a gun fight, bring a nuke in any other situation. You get what you accept. Looking at my situation it was my fault, assuming the supplier had integrity, and Lowes would act quickly to resolve a problem that should never had occurred. The Lowes rep said I had to pay up front, which is when I should have walked out. Live and learn. My wife says I do not like the work other people do, and in general she is right. In 30 years of living in my house, rebuilding from the studs out, there are a few things I have not personally completed: Install wall to wall carpets, install the counter tops, put in a new electric service panel, glass shower enclosure Counter top story is here, the carpet guys had to redo a shoddy seam, the electric guy, middle priced quote out of 4 was perfect. The shower guys took out their work because they did not like how they did the job, I didn't have to ask. My wife comments on 'her' plumber, painter, ceramic guy, sheet rocker, cabinet maker, window installer, roofer, electrician, finish carpenter, deck builder, masonary guy, hardwood installer and finisher. She is right when she says I do not like how most people work. When I got to people's homes to see work done, I am warned to not comment. But even now my wife says things like 'why did they accept that work?' Anyway, a couple of 4 year later comments on Curava counter top material. The counters are nice, durable with a couple of exceptions. Since the stuff is manufactured with ground up glass it does have some possibility of chipping along any edges and even in the field of the stuff. We have a couple of spots where small pieces of glass have chipped out. I repaired one or two by cleaning, filling the small ship with clear epoxy, then trimming with a razor blade. Worked fine. One other issue I would caution customers with. Every here and there we have pieces of blue glass mixed in with our brown and amber colored glass chips. If you do not look closely, you would not see them but I would recommend a very thorough, complete agreement before installation and a close inspection of the surface after install or of the tops before they are installed. Maybe that manufacturing problem has been fixed. I think they may have a few more color choices now so I guess its possible for more color schemes to get mixed at the factory.

lol...i totally want carerra. i would get soapstone if i could. in my last house we remodeled and i got cobra soapstone which was great. i would recommend it to anyone and everyone. our last house was in PA. now we are in florida. i am going to get a cobra sink made and shipped down here but soapstone down here would cost us too much for counters....over $100 more a sq ft than carerra. but carerra is my #2 choice and i love how it looks. but...i cook for reals and i know "patina" is my destiny. but still...i don't know if i am prepared for "the big one!" like an 8" turmeric stain or whatever. on the plus size..the cost here is about $44 a sq ft. it's beautiful. it's natural. it doesn't contain any toxic resins or formaldehyde or radon. i can live with some wabi sabi and if we sell 20 years from now and it looks like crap, i guess we will have to replace it w/new marble to get it ready for the market. who knows! i just want to see some pics ;)

TV is pretty far from real life. You cannot cut granite dry. You must use a wetsaw of some variety. I have seen topmount sink cutouts finished on site with a portable concrete wetsaw, but the major cutting was done in the shop and only a few small areas remained to be completely cut through. Polishing is a whole other set of skills as well. There is NO way you'll be able to polish granite dry. None. It's darn hard for the experts to do it wet with the right equipment. A lot of time there is a difference in sheen that is readily apparent between the top and the edge, and that's due to poor polishing. Seams are done with two part color matched epoxy and some proprietary suction clamps. If you can find someone willing to deal with your parts and pieces, the average fabrication costs for granite are in the $40 a square foot range. That's just the labor, not the materials. Dealing with parts and pieces is actually harder than dealing with a whole slab. If you want to fabricate your own counters, stick with laminate, butcher block, corian or copper. Those are materials suited to a DIYer. Stone is best left to the professionals unless you are doing stone tile.

It just keeps getting worse! So they brought back my counter tops. Installed the now honed tops. It looks like my 7 year old took sandpaper to it. Rough and uneven. They told me it just needs to be cleaned and it is rough from the sealer. Then upon inspection I notice a horrible seam in such an obvious spot. I ask them why they put a seam there instead of cutting the stone into 2 small "L" shapes. They tell me the size would not have worked and I had no choice about that seam line being there. Next, I have a second estimate floor guy(not my builders) come to give me an estimate to sand, stain and finish the floors (my builder's guy was too high$$$) I find out from my floor guy that the wood upstairs is different from the new installed floor downstairs. My builder "decided" to use red oak on the first level even though I told him to keep the same wood throughout the house (we have white oak upstairs and they replaced some spaces up there with white also). I am refinishing the old white oak floors upstairs and staining the whole house. He tells me noone uses white anymore and red is better. boxer- I had me a couple of screaming fits today! My builder is trying to convince me the stained end result of new red oak will look just like the white oak upstairs. I just want an apology and admission of wrong-doing at this point but he wont budge. I told the marble guy the weird seam looks like $H*T and and the honing job is worse than that, but he says it is what it is and "owner #1" is the fabricator and "owner #2" is the installer so they did what was necessary to make the slab pieces fit so the grain matches. Does not look like it to me! And my kitchen is a small U. Couldn't they cut 2 small L's and have the seam at the cooktop? NOOO cause then they couldn't sell my remnants probably! (I only paid for pieces used). So the saga of the coastal house continues... it was easy up until now!