See if you can go to a stone yard. Most have samples of both. Once we got there, we discovered that up close, the manufacture stone was more one dimensional. Real stone has life in it. It stood to reason...we don't like fake leather or wood-look floors either. I recently saw some artificial stone pillars. It looked like a car bumped into one edge of it. Underneath, it just looked like concrete and pieces of stone. Ditto on the pricing.

I have a friend who stacked one side of his raised bond beam in my area. From what I watched, this is my take. Lineal foot would be from end to end. Any pool measurement on coping is usually accounted for by perimeter measurement. For example, a 100' standard row of 6" tile at $12.00/ft is $1200.00. If it has a 20 raised beam, that would add another 20' or $240.00 and so on. I don't think they do it like a board foot measurement of wood where you pay for every square inch. My friend had this deal. He went out and bought the two pallets of stone and they cut it on site and he paid the labor. The cutting is a huge and expensive job as his stone was very hard. If the stone comes cut, you might consider a deal for materials plus labor if they cannot give you a firm price up front.

We DIY a metal stud and hardie board grill island using Tejas Textured Stone. It is much lighter weight than real stone. I like the looks of real stone a lot better, though this is not terrible. We removed a tree planting bed and installed flagstone in it's place for a 54" round coffee table with fire pit/fire glass and rock seating wall capped with flagstone that matches the pool retaining wall and coping. In doing so, we removed a flower bed as well, and were quoted to cover the old flowerbed with pavestone pavers, as is the rest of the patio. Only after excavation did our contractor learn our pavers were no longer made, so we opted to move the grill island (which would have been much heavier with real stone), remove the pavers under it and replace with flagstone. Needless to say, now I think the grill island doesn't look as good. I have pavers, oklahoma flagstone and Tejas all competing. The grill is 18 years old and ready to be replaced. So far, we haven't found a new grill to fit this cut out in the island so we may have to rebuild. I would go back with real stone instead of Tejas Textured Stone. The top is Noce 4x4 travertine with Longhorn inserts. The tile has held up exceptionally well and I power was it and seal it once a year. Bird poop, grill grease, ketchup, bbq sauce comes right off.

I don't think WTA is wondering if they are vinyl, just porcelain vs natural stone tile. I can't tell from the photos. Stone tile--along with porcelain or ceramic tile--won't be harmed by steam. The best thing would be to find a spot that isn't very visible and test different cleaning methods. In general though, ceramic, porcelain, rustic-looking stone are all pretty durable. (Some stone can etch from chemicals but your floor is textured enough that you probably wouldn't notice if it did.) If you have a sealer on real stone, it might be removed with cleaning incorrectly, but if your floors are grubby anyway, you'd want to reseal so it might not matter.