I just paid 9 grand for 2 slabs of bianco superiore quartzite and this is with a “discount”

Sounds like your builder put you in an A level stone for pricing sake, and any level above that is going to be a change order for the $$$ difference, and for additional builder profit. It is very common builder strategy to lowball allowances. All of their profit is in change orders.

The backsplash square footage hasn't been mentioned. Next step is to take pictures of all the slabs you favor and print them out to do possible layouts. Including how the wall slab(s) integrates with both the counter and the island. The visual impact of the large island has to work with the upright impactful details of the wall. This is how you get the value and enjoyment out of Taj and choose between levels.

It's the most crazy frustrating circular logic business model, but apparently, that's how it was when we shopped and still is. We ended playing their game and picking 5 different "level" stones and got prices on all of them, so we could really shop within our budget.

Quartzite costs more to fabricate even if its free. Its harder.

Quartzite is harder than granite. It uses up diamond based tools faster. That cost has to be included in the quote. That stays the same between different slab levels.

I am going to say this again - this industry is ripe for disruption.....

At least with Home Depot it's a $/sq foot and there's a price.

And with HD, you get to view a chunk of stone in the store, and oops, there it is in your kitchen, and it's nothing like you thought it would be. They thrive off of selling lower quality stone, with awful seams, for people who are thrilled about upgrading from laminate. If you are at all an educated consumer, and want more involvement, and more information, then going that route is going to leave you very very disappointed.

Yes, HD is somewhat more transparent. But it is easy to make your shopping also transparent, when a bit of effort is expended on the front end to choose a good quality fabricator before you start looking at pretty stuff. They will tell you to go to Distributor A, C and G, but avoid B, D, E, and F, because they sell marble as quartzite and other things that reputable wholesalers do not. They also have been in business long enough to know their local distributors price levels, and can communicate that.

In the end, the reputation and quality of the fabricator is worth more than a piddling $20 a square difference in raw materials price. It is the FINISHED price, with labor, in your kitchen, that is important. As material costs rise, so does labor. But it is not always the linear. 50/50. Some stones are notoriously difficult to fabricate, and shale in your hands while trying to cut them. They are expensive slabs, and even more expensive labor. Low cost stones like Luna Pearl can be $5 a square foot as a slab. And most of the price of the end product is in the labor. There's a certain base price to getting stone fabricated and in your kitchen. Usually around $35-$40 a square foot, determined by region and how well they are on board with OSHA's wet fabrication safety requirements so your fabricators do not die of silicosis.

Buying stone, even through a box store, has a lot of variables to get to the end result. This is why is is always best to have your kitchen designer to consult with for the process. They have been there a time or two, and know all the things you don't know. They are there to help you navigate through a whole thousand decision minefield where you don't know what you don't know about a kitchen project.

I had a great fabricator that didn't make me wonder about things and worked well with me throughout the process. But when I see other folks not get templates done, or layouts shown or switched stones, etc etc etc - it drives me bananas. There IS a market for a professional stone fabricator with a decent selelction of stones, and more transparent pricing.

From what we have learned here - HD generally has decent installers and at least you have some larger recourse if something is screwed up. You give up a more personal experience and the ability to pick out a stone.

"HD generally has decent installers and at least you have some larger recourse if something is screwed up"

I disagree. HD subcontracts the work, and because the subcontractors have no skin in the game - since it's not their name on the project, and they won't get bad reviews online under their name - they don't have much incentive to do a good job or to put their best people on the job. Furthermore, the good contractors don't need to get subcontracted work from HD; they are very busy on their own. And worst of all, when something goes wrong, you are dealing with an enormous corporation and you are like a little mosquito to them. We have seen this issue on this forum many times - where the homeowner can't get anyone at HD to handle the problem, the local store tells them to call corporate and the corporate number (outsourced customer service) tell the homeowner to call the local store, the homeowner gets shunted around from person to person, doesn't get called back, and no resolution for months.

Try no restitution for years. Or ever.

"Please confine your comments to subjects that you know something about."

@Joseph Corlett, LLC your overreactive defensive stance was unwarranted. In any case, all you have to do is read the many threads on this forum of problems people have had with counter installations by Home Depot and Lowes.

"Yes, we have witnessed the big boxes jerking customers around here on Houzz, however, that has nothing to do with the quality of the subs they hire."

That is a contradiction. If the contractors had done quality work, there would be no need to go to the big box stores for resolution of issues.

"If you can substantiate your positions with facts, as I have, please do so."

Your "facts" are based on your individual experience, not any kind of broad view. Given your offensive tone, I shouldn't do anything to cater to you. But for the sake of others reading this thread, here you go. There's plenty more, but I didn't want to devote any more time to your comment.

I just read an article about an anti-trust lawsuit against boat brokers. After the success of the anti-trust lawsuit against real estate brokers, people are looking at other situations that they consider exploitative. Sounds to me like this could be another area that could find itself in the crosshairs with its anti-competitive behavior.

Ridiculous statement. Nothing about stone sales is ”anti competitive”. Homeoeners are not stone sellers clients. They are not party to the sale, or proprietary business information. Fabricators are a wholesalers client. The bar is the liquor wholesaler’s customer. And you buy the mixed drink from them. Without asking how much they paid for the bottle.

A homeowner wanting to buy stone direct is like going to Wurth and buying a giant bundle of white oak. Now what are you going to do with it? Without the machines, skills, and experience, it isn’t going to turn into cabinets by you magically wishing it to be.

Stone is heavy and very very dangerous. You aren’t going to play at fabricating it. So let the professionals handle it. Including pricing the whole job, with all the different things that go into pricing it as a completed job. Including the customer surcharge that some earn the right to. Stone is a service, not a commodity.

But there's no way for me to realistically pick out a slab when there's no way of knowing what it will cost. I had three different stones that I liked. I had no way of knowing if the delta between prices was going to be $100 more, $1000 more, or $10,000 more than the others. If two stones are similar in appearance, or one is definitely more desirable, the final cost is important to know! It's like going to the steak house, or bar, and ordering drinks and a steak without prices. Does the filet cost more than prime rib? No way of knowing until you get the bill.

Stone is a raw material. The whole screw the customer network won't tell me how much that stone sells for because I have to buy it through a fabricator with their price for doing the install included--one price is given, not two.

That is anticompetitive just like forcing the house seller to pay the home buyer's broker.

Hope this is the next industry to tumble.

When we renovated our house, I was only interested in the all-in cost of our countertops, cabinets, and floors. The split between the two components of the final price, materials and labor, wasn't relevant since I had to pay the combined final price.

Even if I knew the cost of the materials and picked a cheaper material, if that cheaper material was more difficult to install, I might still have a higher final cost than a more expensive material that was easy to install; ergo, my interest only in final, all-in cost.

HU:

You don't have to buy through a fabricator. Toddle into a stone slab seller with your checkbook and they'll have the crane truck lower your slabs onto the 2x4 A frame you built in your driveway. Nothing remotely anti-competative here.

"No way of knowing until you get the bill."

Sure there is. It's called a "menu". It has the prices on it.

If only there was a menu at the stone yard….

"If only there was a menu at the stone yard…."

There is, to some extent. Many stone yards have tiered pricing -- say, A-Z or 1-10 or something along those lines, the higher the letter or number, the more expensive the stone. No, the price isn't completely transparent at that time, but it is obvious which are more expensive options. If you tell the salesperson you need to stay under X-amount per sq foot, they'll tell you which letters or numbers to stay below. That is the price for the stone, not the installation. Installation is a whole other variable.

Minardi, It’s a small kitchen. The island countertop is the largest thing in there. I can’t afford 5-6 slabs!! Is granite cheaper??

How is it a small kitchen with a 4' x 10' island? Right there for the 10' if you have no cabinetry on either end of the island you have at a minimum 16-17' long.

And if you have a 4' island width and no seating and no cabinets behind you have a minimum of 13'-14'. So the bare minimum and a 10' x 4' island in that space will look cramped is 13' x 16'. That's not small by most standards.

I bought Fascination quartzite back in 2017 and my slabs were 4k each back then. I'm guessing they have gone up in price since then.

Joseph Corlett, I have been to the local fabricators (six within a 30-45 minute drive of my house), and they have a very small selection in stock. And when I say small, I am not refering to the number of different types of slabs, but I mean just the total number of slabs in general. Perhaps you live in an actual city, not a small town, but the local fabricators carry very little because there are carrying costs for that inventory.

I believe that you are in Florida. Yes? The Florida real estate market bears little resemblance to the real estate market in your average small town or a lot of the United States for that matter. Remodeling and home building in other areas of the county are much different than the real estate boom-and-bust hot spots like Florida and California.

The fabricators were the ones who handled me a 2-page list of wholesalers in the Chicago area to visit (I live across the border in Indiana) and told me to go there. No, I am not in a one-horse backwater farm town area.

Of the six local fabricators, one of the six does not even offer the ability to do a chiseled edge on granite--they do not have the equipment. This fabricator had the ridiculous nerve to tell me that I would get cut by a chiseled edge granite countertop. Really? I've had one in my bathroom for the past five years, and we have never had to call 911 over people slitting their wrists on it. Slimy? You bet.

Only one of the six local fabricators can do a leathered finish at their operation (they can not do other finishes--you have to buy a slab with the finish). The other five require that you buy your slab from the wholesaler with whatever finish you want.

The reason that they do this "one price" crap is so that it makes it difficult for you as a consumer to learn which fabricator is willing to give me the best price. I totally get that buying from a skilled fabricator is worth it--just like I totally appreciate a skilled tile installer.

Nonetheless, it is anticompetitive BS for me to drive to a wholesaler (who will not tell me what the slab costs, although they will play Marco Polo with me). The wholesaler won't sell it to me and put it in my truck bed nor will the wholesaler tell me the price. What I have to do is tell the wholesaler that I am working with Fabricator XXX, and Fabricator XXX will give me a quote. Well how in the heck do I know if I want to work with Fabricator XXX? And how do I know what Fabricator XXX will charge me in advance, because they won't give me a quote before I find a stone.

Total BS. As I said, I totally get hiring skilled people and paying them appropriately. If I am comfortable with someone and have a level of trust with them, I am ok with them just submitting a bill at the end for their services. That way, I get way what I want exactly how I want it and they don't cut corners--and I am very picky about what I want.

I'm not some young inexperienced first home owner. I've remodeled things before, and I've used some of the local fabricators before. Most of the six in my area are fairly new, and one is the Home Depot fabricator. I've always just gone straight to them--even when I bought cabinets for my husband's office kitchen through Home Depot, because I could look at the actual stone. (And sadly, Innermost Cabinets--owned by Elkay--and no longer made, but they were carried by Home Depot and were great cabinets).

I got a bit lengthy here. But I am sick of the crap and people who defend it. If you do good service, you don't need to play games, and if you do crap installs...

It's a custom product, and as has been mentioned, the stoneyard is a wholesaler. The fabricator is buying wholesale and selling retail, and his price includes a mark-up and any labor and overhead. The labor includes hourly wages, payroll taxes, unemployment insurance, for templating, cutting, seaming, transporting, installation. Overhead is the work shop and all that entails--rent, depreciation, utilities, supervisory personnel, property taxes, insurance, maintenance, etc.

When I have a client that wants a custom window treatment, I can't give them a price until I know what materials I need and what the labor will cost to fabricate the product. We go to the trade showroom, and they view various fabrics. Once they select a fabric and style, I work up a price for materials and labor, and if they are amenable, we move forward. If the price is too high, I will suggest a less expensive material. But the labor and overhead are the same.

It's a very similar situation, and is in no way anti-competitive or "jinky."

Fabricators are a wholesalers client. The bar is the liquor wholesaler’s customer. And you buy the mixed drink from them. Without asking how much they paid for the bottle.

Not an accurate analogy because when you want to get a drink you go into the bar - the retailer and shop their menu. You don't go to a wholesaler. When you are at the retail location you see a menu. In this case they are in fact asking you as a home owner to go to a wholesaler to select something and you don't know how much it is.

It would be so much easier if it were like tiles, or wallpaper. You find a product you like. You know how much it costs. You tell your tile or wallpaper installer and they say how much it would cost to install and whether it costs more or less to install because it is harder tile or patterned wallpaper to work with.

I have gone to stone yards that won't give you a range or levels. I have also talked to fabricator/installers who have said you buy the stone, pay whatever price the stone yard will sell it to you for. I'll pick it up, fabricate, install. Sounded great until no stone yard would give me prices and said my installer had to buy it.

You can tell who has never actually been to a bar. No one posts prices of anything in a dive.

Most fabricators stock slabs of the more ordinary stones. With prices right there on them. Just not all the add ons and extras. It ’s only when ordinary and inexpensive just won’t do for someone that one even has to go to a slab wholesaler. When you want custom, the costs are never known up front.

You can also tell who has only ever been to a dive bar and no other kind of bar. Certainly cocktail bars have menus.

When I go into a dive bar, I can generally anticipate the price, especially depending on if it is a true dive bar or a dive bar in a gentrifying neighborhood. Why? Because a bar is a place that you frequent many times throughout your year.

A stone yard, a fabricator, they are in odd parts of semi-industrial warehouses semi-suburban towns. Can't really tell what you are getting into price wise. And if you are lucky, you really will go once every ten years or less.

It ’s only when ordinary and inexpensive just won’t do for someone....

This is Houzz. A lot of people on here are looking for custom kitchens. Or they are at least interested in understanding what the difference in price is between inexpensive and expensive.

HU-48094157, I don't know where you live, but wanting something beyond the very basic granite that they have in stock is not being the fancy-pants customer. Especially, when the fabricators often only have 1 or 2 slabs of a particular stone in stock and a kitchen might need several slabs.

People here are dissing Home Depot. Well, if Home Depot actually carries a bigger selection than 5 of my 6 local fabricators (6th one is the Home Depot fabricator), then there is going to be more people going that route for good reason. It is not that critical to pick out a stone that is man-made like quartz or lacking in design like an absolute black granite.

At my previous house, I had a small basement bar area done in granite from Home Depot. The fabricators did a most excellent job, and they were on time and on budget. Absolutely no complaints about the stone or the install from Home Depot. I am in MI, and from what I recall Joseph Corlett saying, the fabricator(s) that have the Home Depot contracts in MI are top-notch.

Custom slabs are selected at slab warehouses with an unmatched extensive selection of natural stones and most of the usual manufactured quartz slabs, then quoted w fabrication & install by custom shops.

The big box stores are only as good as the local vendor(s) choosing to work through them & the local store manager's ability to manage the process.

"People here are dissing Home Depot. Well, if Home Depot actually carries a bigger selection than 5 of my 6 local fabricators (6th one is the Home Depot fabricator), then there is going to be more people going that route for good reason. It is not that critical to pick out a stone that is man-made like quartz or lacking in design like an absolute black granite."

@HU-910663146 to be clear, the issues with Home Depot are not about variety of selection. The issues are about fabrication and installation by Home Depot subcontractors. Poor quality work, and difficult-to-impossible recourse from Home Depot when there are problems.

Wholesale material pricing from a Spring 2023 home, client selections:

$2600/slab for quartzite (needed 4-6)

$1200/slab marble (not a popular marble)

$860/slab engineered quartz (some popular veined quartz is $2-3K/slab)

They were over on Quartzite due to upgrading the backsplashes from tile, but the rest was very reasonable!

BBQ was still a budget issue as they had expanded the cooking surfaces vs plan and needed both back and side splashes requiring a 2nd slab. First choice created a $2K overun.

Then they found 2 slabs of smoky grey totaling $400, exceptionally low even for a commodity material but think about that next time you see the teaser advertised per square foot price.

materials, fabrication & install for the job were about $32K w mitred edges, no waterfalls. I've had clients in smaller homes with fewer counters spend double.

M Miller:

Your previous posting seriously lacks context. There must be an amount of jobs installed to amount of complaints ratio to accurately quantify the quality of big box top installations. Your local fabricator may get 3 one-star reviews on the $3,000,000.00 dollars worth of work they do annually. Not bad, but if one of the big boxes does $300,000,000.00, dollars worth of work annually, they could have 300 one-star reviews and be equal. It is much easier to find complaints in a pool of 300 than in one of 3.

This is symptomatic of BBBS, otherwise known as Big Box Bashing Syndrome. People feel sorry for the mom-n-pop businesses who, through lack of buying power, are unable to compete against the big boxes on price. Instead of acknowledging the brutality of capitalism which brings lower prices to consumers, they spin myths like yours and nonsense about brand name faucets sold at big boxes being inferior to those sold by the local guy.

If you feel sorry enough for your local suppliers to pay more for the same quality/service, have at it, it's a free country, and that's the beauty of capitalism, however, making unsubstantiated and unquantified allegations serves no one.

It's been interesting hearing different perspectives here. My experience is that it is not anti competitive although it would have been more convenient if they have some price ranges at the stone yard. Slabs were all categorized by levels, and local fabricators were willing to give rough prices based on the level of material.

There are many things in life where prices are not posted upfront. For example, wren ordering a mixed drink from a restaurant server, you can ask for one with well vodka (usually the standard) or a specific top shelf vodka. If you ask the server for the cost, they likely have no idea unless it's a popular drink. The bartender might not even know until they enter it into the computer. Yet most people don't ask the prices of mixed drinks before ordering and just pay the bill. Not saying that's how you should buy slabs, just saying it's not anti competitive.

The plan currently calls for 4 slabs and several “remnants” from the fabricator’s supply.

Who created this plan? A builder? General contractor? Did they provide you an allowance for countertop material? If so, did they tell you how they came up with that allowance? Is it based on granite, mid-level quartz, quartzite, etc?

Most of the fabricators I work with carry remnants, not slabs. Remnants are a great way to save money in spaces that require a small amount of material like bathrooms. But you are limited by the selection/availability of material in the fabricator's stock.

When looking for slabs for spaces that require more material than you can get from a remnant, you need to know first your fabricator. They are the ones that will provide to you pricing. Does your builder have a fabricator or are they leaving it to you to find one? Then you need to know how your countertop budget was established. Did it include the waterfall ends and backsplash? If not, expect to pay a lot more than your allowance. What did the builder assume was the material when giving you a budget?

Loosely speaking, pricing follows this structure from least to most expensive (for slabs only, not considering materials like Formica, Corian, etc.):

Granite - Common

Quartz - MSI, Hanstone

Granite - Mid to Exotic

Quartz- Silestone, Cambria, Caesarstone

Marble - Common

Quartzite - Common

Marble - Luxury

Quartzite - Luxury

Four slabs of common granite can be $8000 vs four slabs of luxury Iceberg quartzite can be $40k. So before worrying about the price of each slab you see, make sure you are looking at the correct general material that fits your budget. In other words, it doesn't matter the difference between Taj Mahal quartzite and Cristallo quartzite if your budget is for MSI quartz.

Your builder and/or your designer should have made sure you understood your budget and the material you should consider before setting you loose to shop for slabs. Also, it's perfectly reasonable to select slabs and then send the information to the fabricator for pricing. If they price too high, you can cancel the slabs. Warehouse typically give a few days to a week or two before you commit.

Thought of this thread tonight as I scanned a cocktail menu at a bar, which included the brand name of many of the alcohols in the mixed drinks and listed the drink prices too.

Comparing the cost of a mixed drink in a bar to slabs of stone in a kitchen is a bit silly. Even if the drink turns out to be 10 times what you wanted to pay, maybe you're out a hundred dollars or so. If the stone turns out to be even 25% over what you wanted to pay, you could be out thousands.

The biggest issue is finding out the bid/ask on the type of stones you're considering. It's not that difficult--you go to the stone yard, select 2 or 3 stones, get the installed price from the fabricator, and pick the one that best fits your budget and your vision for the room.

I don't like the process in general, but where I have a particular annoyance is what happens after picking out the unpriced slab at a stone yard. If I want to reserve it, I would have to say that I am working with Fabricator XX. But since I don't know what Fabricator XX would charge, why would I want to be locked into Fabricator XX.

Has anyone here said, I am potentially working with Fabricator XX, Fabricator YY, and Fabricator ZZ? And then gotten estimates from 3 fabricators? As I see it, the stone yard could be selling the slab at different prices to different fabricators (volume discount for high volume fabricator perhaps) and then each fabricator would have their own prices for their services.

I went to three places with slabs. All were wholesale and would not tell me prices directly. I found a fabricator and explained that I needed prices before committing to slabs or to him. He was fine with that. Through him, I got prices on about five different countertop options for the entire kitchen. From there, I had him give me quotes on if I did the island different stones. He was very willing to work with me and help price things out before I committed to using him, which I ultimately did. It makes for a more time consuming process, but I did get to know my fabricator a bit better, which I think was helpful in the long run as I trusted him more.

"There must be an amount of jobs installed to amount of complaints ratio to accurately quantify the quality of big box top installations."

@Joseph Corlett, LLC - Home Depot is enormous, I do not know what percentage of their $150 billion revenue a year is from subcontracted countertop business, and then what percentage of that receives complaints. Joseph - what percentage would you find acceptable for complaints? 10%, 5%? I do know there is a large amount of complaints on this forum as well as elsewhere online of horrible experiences with HD, as I posted above. Plus the problems with lack of recourse when working with corporate. You yourself said in this thread "Yes, we have witnessed the big boxes jerking customers around here on Houzz" - then you deleted that comment.

"This is symptomatic of BBBS, otherwise known as Big Box Bashing Syndrome. People feel sorry for the mom-n-pop businesses who, through lack of buying power, are unable to compete against the big boxes on price. Instead of acknowledging the brutality of capitalism which brings lower prices to consumers, they spin myths like yours"

It looks like there is a fat-finger typo in your comment. Not "BBBS" that you typed, it should have been "BS". That^^ is a story entirely from your imagination. The stone fabricators/installers I have worked with are decades in the business, with multi-generational family members. The granite suppliers are same, and have no issue of lack of buying power. The ones I have used typically have 10,000-15,000 slabs in stock. They are in demand, and their prices reflect that, as do their years of success.

As I said above, the quality shops do not need to go to Home Depot to get work. And customers are willing to pay their higher prices to avoid the tales of woe we see on here about bad installations, counters marked and ruined upon installation, bad mitering, bad scribing, bad seams, poor communication, and so on.

You mentioned "a syndrome of feeling sorry". I do feel sorry - for the consumers who have their counters installed by Home Depot, either because those consumers mistakenly believe that recourse through a corporate giant will be better - when the opposite is true, or, they live in an area that does not have local fabricators and suppliers so they are forced to use Home Depot. These consumers are paying money they perhaps have saved for years, worked long and hard, had dreams of what their new kitchens will look like, only to receive the bad workmanship from HD subcontractors we have seen reported on this forum.

Granite City and Jamie MIller explain the process from both the fabricator and the customer points of view. It's really not very difficult if you have a fabricator that you trust. And no, I wouldn't go to more than one fabricator.

Another analogy from a design perspective--client: how much wallpaper do I need in this room? designer: it depends on which wallpaper you choose. Plain with no pattern will require much less than one with a very large pattern and a half-drop repeat. It also depends on how many openings (windows/doors) in the room. It also depends on which type of paper--a hand blocked mural with lots of colors will be much more expensive than a machine printed monochromatic one. Grasscloth takes a special type of installation and will cost more, all else being equal. So many variables, just like stones.

Diana Bier Interiors, why wouldn't I approach different fabricators for quotes?

If you want an analogy, having one fabricator prepare different price quotes for different stone slabs is like having a car dealership like Ford prepare different price quotes for different models of Ford cars. But if I am car shopping, why would I only wish to confine myself to shopping for cars at Ford? Why wouldn't I also want to go to Honda, Toyota, Mazda, and Chevolet and receive price quotes for different models of cars from them too? I could then decide if a sedan or SUV would best suit my needs and then decide which sedan or SUV model represented the best value from among the different dealers.

Since we are talking about Home Depot fabricators, in my area, the fabricator with the longest history and who was very good with a good selection and more modern equipment was also the Home Depot fabricator. This may have changed as the surrounding area has grown, but this was true for many years in my area.

That said, when Dekton first became known (20 years ago or so) in my area, Home Depot had several kitchen cabinet displays with Dekton countertops at their store. I looked at the seams on those Dekton countertops and waterfalls, and they were horrible. I asked the staff who was the installer, and it was the same fabricator which had the long history and good reputation. Dekton was new, and the fabricator initially sucked at it.

The reason I wouldn't go to different fabricators is because I like to use all the trades and services that work well together. When I redid my kitchen, I used a Design/Build firm that was very highly rated. I went with all their recommendations since I knew that they have worked with all their sources for MANY years and they were all vetted. Sometimes it pays to spend a little more for the workmanship and peace of mind that comes with a trade that is a known quantity versus one that is just a shot in the dark.

And the analogy about car dealers isn't totally on point. Stones, especially natural stones, aren't branded like cars are. You can get Carrara marble, Taj Mahal quartzite or Jet Mist granite at most any reputable stone yard.

In our area, we found that some yards were more geared towards the stones/slabs favored by the big tract home builders (one admitted as much), others were in the middle, and only a handful dealt with the true exotics.

“That's me ^ 29 posts up. There has been no deletion as you've alleged; it's still there. You're guilty of sloppy research again.”

@Joseph Corlett, LLC the comment in which you talked about “the big boxes jerking customers around” is gone. You Joseph Corlett can see it because on Houzz a comment that’s been deleted is still visible to the person who wrote it, but only that person. If you log out and view this thread while not logged in, you won’t see that particular comment of yours which had unwarranted insults aimed at me. It’s deleted. Your most recent put-down is incorrect - I am not “guilty of sloppy research” as you wrote.

M Miller:

Here is your quote:

"You yourself said in this thread "Yes, we have witnessed the big boxes jerking customers around here on Houzz" - then you deleted that comment."

You said I deleted my comment. That is false. It may be deleted for viewers other than me, but it was not deleted by me.

I have reviewed the post in question. Asking you to comment on subjects about which you know something and asking you to substantiate your position hardly constitutes "unwarranted insults".

No, your tone was disrespectful, smug, patronizing, and deprecating. That was directed at me just because you do not agree with my criticism of HD's countertop installations, as reported online and on this forum. Since I have "known" you for many years, you have never changed in this regard. If anyone disagrees with you, you will have a knee-jerk emotional reaction. You've even talked about this reaction you've had toward your own paying clients. It's something I expected when my son was 12, but as a grown man, he has gained a mature control of rational reactions and emotion.