A lot of the stone was used in the house, but we didn’t do anything like marble door jams, like I originally wanted for the master bathroom. I know! Over the top! Even my contractor looked at me when I asked for it, and simply said, “it’s going to be…….!”. Around early 2021, I decided I wanted a marble kitchen for sure and marble in the master bathroom. Fast forward to 2024, and the construction is nearing an end and the only room with no marble is the guest bathroom. The green sink may look like marble, but it’s actually a quartzite stone. I probably did way too much marble in the house.

From the viola marble used on the master bath counters and trim, to the Calcutta marble in the kitchen. As we were picking it out, I soon learned the real cost between veining and no veining. As we selected the stone for the master bathroom, I was trying to achieve a look of the stone seen at the Hotel Fouquet New York bathrooms. I wanted to go all red/pink tone viola but Clem asked to tone down the pinks. In the end we picked an amazing piece that was close enough to our price range. Then came the fluted marble detail I was trying to achieve, that will have to be a blog post in itself.

We then chose white Calcutta marble penny round tile for the master bath floor, and the large marble tile on the walls. The wall originally were supposed to be Calcatta Oro tiles, but when I started pricing out the oro tile, it was just as expensive as the slabs we were purchasing for the kitchen counters and backsplash. I decided to do another visit over at Da Vinci in Redwood City, one last time to go over the options and possibly look for a cheaper marble tile for the master shower walls. My amazing designer at Da Vinci, Hadas was so much fun to work with and helped me greatly by recommending a similar marble tile done in the Calcattah Bourghini.

When I put the Oro, next to Bourghini, I realized that Oro would actually wash out the bathroom. The Bourghini had a gold/reddish veining in it that would tie better with the Viola marble on the sing counters and along the time of the shower. It was also going to a couple thousand cheaper to switch from the Oro tiles. The end result is a lot of marble but it gets broken up by the black frame shower enclosure.

Moving to the kitchen, the marble section for the kitchen when a lot easier than the bathroom stone selection. I know I wanted a marble that had some light gray veining in it but with large portions more white. Of course I was immediately drawn to the Calacatta Arabascato from italy. Priced as $133/sqft, that was an expensive option. That would have been $8k for just one slab. Then I found the most perfect Calacatta Oro slab, that had the least amount of gray veining, but was $227/sqft. That was going to be easily $13K for each slab. I had to get my head out of the clouds.

After some searching, our rep found another Oro marble slab, that had more gray veining but it had large swaths of the slab with white marble. Thankfully that option cut the pricing down $2-3K from the Arabascato marble. One of the design changes Clem request, early in the planning process was to have the back wall in the kitchen be finished in the same stone as the counter, a tile covering the whole back wall, especially under the cabinets. I opted for the matching backsplash and counter top instead. I also added a new counter edge design to the kitchen counter, and carried it over to the guest bath counter. I wanted to have fluted top and bottom edge to the kitchen counter, with a flat spacer between the two flutes.

During the early planning stages, I asked friends and facebook peeps about their use of marble in their own homes. I admit about 70% of the responses I got, were in the negative. I would say 20-30% of those negative feedbacks, came from people who actually had marble. The other 30% initial response to me was “I love my marble, yes it stains and chips easily, but that’s what gives it character.” This response is something I respond to very easily. For our 2012 remodel of the kitchen, we chose a leathered granite for the counters and low-profile backsplash. I loved that counter! I would be the first and only person to chip the counter. Dropping a plate while putting it away. In the end, I held more value in the philosophy, no matter the stone, damage is inevitable.

For the guest bathroom, I chose to do ceramic tile in most of the bathroom. The green tile I originally picked out had 8-12 week lead time. This had me scouring for almost two weeks for an alternative. In the end, we could have easily just gone with the original tile. Because the new tile we selected and had delivered. I messed up on the order. They didn’t have the total quantity in the subway tile pattern. So instead I decided to add a chevron tiles to the mix. This new brand Mercury Mosaics was awesome to work with. Originally they had enough tile in stock to do subway tile on the side walls of the guest shower, and chevron patterns along the backside wall. When I placed the order, I reversed the tile orientations. The installer start his work and when it came time to finish up the side walls. We ran out of tile. Mercury came to our rescue because we had already exhausted their stock. They jumped on a new order on their production team and less than two weeks later, we had the rest of the tile.

For counter in the guest bath, I went through so many green slabs at Da Vinci and All Natural Stone. I wanted the counter and the shower to tie together. While I opted for octogonal penny round ceramic tile in white, with a black inlayed pattern. Ultimately I was able to find a really rich green quartzite. Going through the slabs is such a task to wrap around in your head. If you are working with a designer, they should be pretty well versed on the right slab to choose. Asking your contractor to help with the selection process is even more important. Your contractor will be able to help you with catching things like imperfections, fissures that will cause issues during cutting and also stone fills done by the originator of the stone. These fills can be found more often with Quartzite stone. This brazilian quartzite had a lot of it. I think we looked through 7 slabs from the same cut, and then closely looked and compared three stones. For the kitchen the numbers were about the same, although we ended up purchasing 4 slabs just for the kitchen.

The laundry room was an overlook in the shopping process for the stone. In the back of my head I was planning on using leftover for the kids bathroom and the laundry room. Pictured below was a leftover slab that was available at Kerroc that was perfect for the color combination in the laundry room. With the geometric wood grain tile and the gray cabinetry and trim, the stone fit perfectly. I think I also found it in a pile of stone they planned on dumping soon. Regardless this was a big win!

Like all project, leftovers are inevitable, we put those leftover pieces to good use. We used the leftover kitchen marble on the trim of the kids bathroom showers. The leftover master bath viola marble slab was used on the counters in the kids bathroom, and the small counter in the master bath toilet. Overall the final result from all of my selections worked out great. Then there the fluted trim in the master bathroom, but I will leave that for another post.

REMODEL: Stone, Stone, Stone!

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