We are about to get River Blue (RB) installed in our kitchen. My understanding is this and Fantasy Brown (FB) are of the same family of stone which both come from India. Our designer has FB in her kitchen and many friends with RB…no complaints on durability. I found this article https://www.thegraniteplace.net/blog/fantasy-brown-stone/ on the many classifications of FB which most likely apply to RB as well. We are going to treat our counters like marble with the comfort of knowing it will be way more forgiving.

@S C - I was the OP for this thread. We ended up getting Fantasy Macaubas because it was less expensive. Its been almost 2 years since it was installed and it is wonderful. We had a ring of something on the lighter part that I thought was oil, but it went away after a few months, and I don't see anything there anymore. I was very careful for the first 6 months, then kind of careful for the next 6, and now anything goes. Grease, oil, butter, red wine, saffron: its all been spilled on the countertop. I don't worry about cleaning it up right away (after dinner is good enough as it gets wiped down then). Looks perfect. We got one chip in it from someone banging a pot down. One of these days I'll get the fabriator out to fill it in again. Do it you won't regret it. I posted photos somewhere above in the thread.

We purchased all the 8 slabs in person. The powder room and bar area only used half the slab. They used a slabsmith to show us the veining for approval. It was my assumption that we had a whole slab to work with that they would choose the area with the least amount of fissures. We have bought quartzite before and had no fissure or bad repair issues. I expected them to give us the best part of the slab.

Thank you Kimberly Ferris. we arent certain what happened. Fabrcator is stumped as well. Your stone sure does look like mine. It has been frustrating, as we had our cabinets refinished in a true white, which went nicely with the quartzite. majority of quartzites seem to have a warm/ ivory undertone, which doesnt work well with the cabinets now. hence, which has led me to consider a honed marble, as there are more true white backrounds with marble slabs. the blue/ grey and whites in this stone looked pretty, but I fear the same problem happening again; especislly since they dont know what caused it. At least if i knew the problem, then we could avoid it, but i feel like we would be rolling the dice. but, your sucess does give me pause to maybe reconsider. very frustratimg for sure .