Here's another view.

And one more.

It is cracked. Hope this doesn't cause you trouble at home. So sorry.

Here is another spot on the slab about 18 inches down from the first spot. Any suggestions on what I should do?

Call the installer and say it is cracked. When they come out to look they will tell you if it is natural to the stone or not, but I wouldn't give them that idea. I would call them in saying it's cracked and go from there.

There might be a way to minimize the way that looks but it is beyond my scope. Keep your post visible... someone may have a good suggestion. If it were me, I wouldn't let a second pass before the owner of that company heard from me. You are in a bind because your husband signed off on it, but if the fabricator values his repuation, he should care more about what your lady friends are going to be saying about him in a few days all over town.

I was just able to stop payment on the check. I feel bad about that, but I'm worried that if we don't, we will not be able to get anything done about this. The granite was just installed on Friday. I just wanted others to weigh in and confirm that it's actually cracked. My husband noticed a couple of spots before they left, but he was told that this is how the stone is.

It looks to me like it is cracked also. Since you stopped payment on the check they will be out there in a hurry. You may want to ask Oldryder. He knows his granite!

Thanks everyone. Holly: How would I contact him? Thank you so much.

I would be very careful stopping payment after services rendered. It is a criminal offense in some places, and amounts to "self-help". I'd make my phone call to straighten things out very early tomorrow. If you can't trust him to make things right, he may call the police.

This is what kills me about the natural stone freaks. They go on and on about how "natural" stone is, then when they get the very thing that natural stone is, which is cracking, fissures, etching, and staining, somehow this is the fabricator's fault.

I cannot express how grateful I am that I don't have to take calls like this.

Hit it with a permanent gray magic marker and forget about it.

This post was edited by Trebruchet on Sun, Jun 1, 14 at 22:33

This is what irks a normal person about people with limited aesthetic sensibility. You don't just slap down any old chunk of stone or wood to create a quality product. There are gobs of beeeautifulness in stone without cracks being part of it. Craftsmanship is involved when dealing with natural materials. Lack of skill can destroy the product. And, yes, some pieces have natural flaws that make them unsuitable for every application. The skill of the artisan fits the piece properly to the application.

TXBluebonnet11:

I noticed an appliance handle in your photographs, maybe a dishwasher? Please check to see if there were any holes drilled in the top underneath at the crack. There is no reason to drill tops to mechanically fasten modern dishwashers. If a fastener has caused the crack, you owe the fabricator a shot at a repair that is highly inconspicuous and can't be felt. If he is unsuccessful, he owes you a top.

No, this is a built in microwave. It was there before they installed the counter. Nothing was drilled. They just set the slab in place over the top.

I stopped the check because I am worried that this won't be handled in the right way. They are coming today to complete the job. And I fully intend to pay for it. I just want it done right and once you have paid someone in full you lose any leverage. That's just one thing I've learned the hard way on this remodel. This is a lot of money for us. And I don't want a cracked slab. Can this be repaired? Is this the way this stone is? If I accept a repair, is this something you would be okay with. I am hoping someone with granite experience can chime in. Would you accept this slab in your kitchen? I won't quote what we are paying but suffice it to say that this is several thousand dollars, so I want it to be right. I don't want to fabricator to lose money but this is our forever house and I have to look at this every single day.

Have you posted in KarinMT's rock thread on this forum? She is pretty amazing and a geologist. She may be able to tell you if this particular rock is more likely for things like this.

Good luck.

You can see the need for a disinterested third party expert to give you an opinion and specific info about acceptable standards for this stone in the marketplace. Hopefully you can get further guidance here. But begin checking locally.

I did NOT look at my quartz slabs before they were installed, so I should keep my mouth shut. But I've seen so many posts here urging customers to see the template on the slab before it is cut, and this is an example of why that would be a good idea. If the crack was in the slab, and the customer saw it there and approved it - at least everyone knows it was there before install.

I imagine it's hard to look at every detail of a slab of granite - but once the template is laid out, one only needs to look closely at the areas inside the lines, making something like the OP shows a bit easier to pick out (IF it was there in the beginning).

Good luck, OP, on getting a resolution to your problem.

if it helps, this may be an actual part of the stone and not a crack. i say this because we looked at a particular slab and it had vertical fissures running throughout. we liked the stone but weren't crazy about the fissures as they could be felt so we picked a stone without any. did you template and see the slab before install? if you didn't this may just be a stone with these sorts of lines

I just did a search for Antique Brown granite images and noticed that the antique brown granite in some of the images had the same kind of fissures. It might just be the nature of the beast.

Do you have a picture from before the stone was cut? You might be able to see the fissures in the picture.

This post was edited by jerzeegirl on Mon, Jun 2, 14 at 14:25

Hi. I have quite a large surface area installed with antique brown. These types of fissures/lines are quite common. I have quite a few of them - 5 or 6 in the kitchen, with one going diagonally and being quite long and they look cohesive together. I remember looking at quite a few slabs of this granite and they all had these lines. Unless it is a definite crack, I think it is just part of a granite. I understand if you do not like it - but I do not think it is damaged. I personally find them interesting...

I have leathered antique brown granite. There is a lot of variation in colors, patterns and mine does have lines here and there. I have one long line in mine that seems to be natural to the stone because it is sort of meandering around. The line in your stone seems to meander around in the same way mine does. I can't feel it.

Can you feel the crack/fissure in your antuque brown? Don't know if that means it's a crack or not, but maybe it does.

Re regarding the suggestion to draw on it with a magic marker...i do have one area in my antue brown where there is a blob of white quartz that is just in a place that I don't like it. It's natural to the stone and there are several of these in my slabs. Just this one spot I don't like it, so I did draw on it with a magic marker, then gently wiped it off and now that area just blends in with the rest of the slab.

So if you do find out that it isn't really a crack, that magic marker trick could work for you. Sounds a bit wacky, but it worked for me.

But if it is an actual crack, of course that's a different situation.

TXBluebonnet11:

After hitting the crack with a color matched magic marker, I'd dribble some ultra thin cyanurate (super glue) over it and pound on the top with the bottom of my fists for several minutes. More glue, more pounding. The idea is to vibrate as much adhesive into the fissure as possible.

If you're in a hurry, you can mask off all but the crack and spray an accelerator on the adhesive; it will cure immediately. The masking keeps the rest of the stone from turning green which happens on certain stones.

Scrape off the excessive adhesive with a razor blade. Hopefully, you won't feel it, but if you want it any better, you'll need an experienced polisher.

Antique brown is famous for getting these fissure lines in it long after installation. I LOVE antique brown but that is the thing that kept me from getting it. I read a lot about it. In one instance a man came home from work and found a really long one in his countertop and went on to investigate. He was joined in the discussion by many others who had the same experience and they all shared their knowledge about their findings. But you might ask isn't a fissure more or less a crack? In this case a crack would go all the way through but a fissure is just a shallow line and not harmful to the stone. If you have a place where you can view it from underneath and the line is on the underside of the stone as well that's a crack, otherwise it's just a naturally occurring topical fissure (as was explained to me).

Yes, as others on this post have mentioned, Antique Brown is well known for getting these kinds of fissures. The wonderful owner of the yard where we bought our granite steered us away from a gorgeous Antique Brown slab by warning us that it is less stable than other stones. Sigh: too bad it is also well known for being gorgeous! But that is a big trade off.