No engineered stone is approved for UV exposure. It’s not an industry secret at all. None can go outside. Period. If your professionals that you worked with had done their jobs, you’d be an educated consumer and know that it’s not an exclusion just for Cambria. Direct sun from standard new windows shouldn’t pass enough UV to damage your floors, furniture, or e-stone. Standard windows already come with UV blocking properties, so if yours are so old that they don’t have it, you’ve got other issues about UV exposure in your house. Old windows need UV blocking film installed to avoid degradation to all kinds of interior finishes. Not just your e-stone. If it’s a relatively new window, that’s a conversation that you need to have with your window manufacturer. It’s defective. This is Not on Cambria. Or Silestone. Or Pental. Or Zodiaq. Or any e-stone manufacturer. New windows shouldn’t have issues with transmitting enough UV to damage your home.. Poop happens. This isn’t on Cambria. Talk to your window manufacturer.

I think it depends on the dealer, their markup, size of job and the brand and color chosen. The other day, I compared my everyday quartz prices with theirs. Here is what I found: IT'S ALL OVER THE PLACE 1. On many colors, we were about the same. 2. On some colors, I beat their price by a little bit and SOME I beat by a LOT! 3. There was one color, when on sale, their price was close to my cost!!! (LOSS LEADER). I think the box stores have a huge difference on their markup on purpose. I assume they do this to average out their profit margins. On larger jobs, I will give a discount due to the volume. I I just sold a whole house job with about 221 SF of Minuet with 10 cutouts, a tub cutout and faucet drillings. My price was $2500 less than HD for their regular price on this material. Even with HD's sale of 10%, my price was still less than theirs. Aside from price, I believe you will get better customer service with a locally owned kitchen dealer! The box stores will make you responsible for everything if anything goes wrong. Even if a box store is a couple hundred more, in the whole scheme of things...you will be better off with a dealer. It's not always about price.

" It's only 10ft 7in. so it should fit on a slab and not need a seam right?" When Silestone tells a fabricator a jumbo slab is 63" x 128", that is the minimum useable yield he'll get; he might squeak out another inch or two even on a regular slab (55" x 120"). You probably weren't charged extra for a seamless jumbo, but what you've gotten is two remnants from different batches. He woulda made good money on this one, had he gotten away with it.

For several hundred dollars more I'd save my money and buy a bottle of sealer and seal the counters myself. The local company granites failed the wine test because the sample you had probably weren't sealed.