Reader question: Where do I look at granite slabs?
Help! I'm renovating my kitchen and want to put in natural stone (Granite or marble) countertops. Can you give me the name of a supplier who has full slabs that I can go and look at?
I want if you want to pick my own slab and feature that turned into my countertop.
Hmmm. You did not tell me wherein you are so I cannot advise each person. But if I were you, I'd do a Google seek the usage of terms like "granite fabricator [my town]." The addition signal isn't always wished any greater but vintage habits die tough. Your instinct to look at slabs of stone before you purchase whatever is the suitable one even though.
Wanting to have a look at slabs is a great idea, but it's greater than just a great concept. It ought to be the usual working system of each dealer involved in your kitchen preservation. Never purchase a natural stone anything from a person who might not can help you study complete slabs. I don't care how tight and repetitive the granite pattern in query is, natural stone desires to be visible as complete slabs. All herbal stone has color variations and some of them are highly consequential. It is impossible to get a feel for what granite looks like from a small sample. The equal goes for marble, quartzite, gabbro, serpentinite, limestone, sandstone, travertine, sinter or every other dimensional stone.
I even have boxes complete of four-inch through four-inch granite and marble samples, but I use them to position palettes together. As in, "here's your cupboard timber and coloration, your ground tile, your wall tile, your wall colours and your granite colour." I'm the usage of the ones granite samples to illustrate shades, not to make selections about styles.
If you're renovating your kitchen, a really smart first step would be to talk to a kitchen designer. When you're interviewing the designer, make sure that he or she is planning a field trip to a stone yard as part of the process of putting a design together for you. Any kitchen designer worth his salt has a relationship with a stone fabricator already. He or she should be willing to use that relationship to educate you first-hand about your counter options. That can only be done in a stone yard.
Scattered throughout this post are a group of granite samples. They are similar to the scale samples that home centers use to sell granite counters. This borders on crook pastime and here's why. All of those samples are close americacut from the slab beneath.
Imagine falling in love with the primary or 2d samples only to have the slab up there show up after you've already spent several thousand bucks. Oy!