Marble. Granite. Travertine. If these materials are the stuff of your dreams, you must be on the tile circuit with high hopes of finding an amazing natural material to turn into a countertop or floor. Oregon Home talked with a couple of stone sellers, stone fabricators and interior designers to set you up for tilework that will thrill you long after its grout dries.

[1. DON'T CUT CORNERS ON THE FABRICATOR WHOSE JOB IT WILL BE TO TURN YOUR BEAUTIFUL SLAB INTO GORGEOUS COUNTERTOPS]
A fabricator can make or break your marble or granite countertops—literally. Quality fabricators will take back a finished countertop that breaks on installation; fly-by-night folks won’t. Fabricators, with their detailed knowledge of how to finish stone, can ensure that you won’t end up with a countertop so porous that it stains the first time you set something on it.

“Actually, it’s advantageous for you to contact a fabricator before you choose your countertop material,” says Peter Rigutto, the owner of Classic Marmo in Portland. “An experienced fabricator can recommend different options, because certain materials will work better in certain applications, and can help you select the proper piece of material that will meet your specific countertop needs. It’s important that the fabricator be knowledgeable about the material, know the limits of the material and know what the wear and tear will be on the piece after it’s been installed.”


[2. SHOW OFF THE IMPERFECTIONS OF NATURAL STONE AND HANDMADE TILE.]
Marbles and granites have nature’s “birthmarks” that come in the form of swirls, grain oddities and other markings that give the material a movement that manmade surfaces can’t match. Celebrate them! Don’t try to find material without these conversation-starting markings. “I look for those natural variations in the material,” says Drew Brandt, the owner of Intrepid Marble and Granite in Portland. “As long as the ‘flaws’ are consistent throughout the material, you can use it. Marbles and granites can have a lot of natural variation in them, but that’s often what makes them so beautiful.”

If there are areas of the slab you don’t like or want to downplay, those sections can be taken into consideration when the piece is fabricated. “If you have one spot or one different colored vein, you can put that part of the material in the back of the countertop,” says Elizabeth Gibson, the owner of Denali Stoneworks in Portland, one of the only female-owned fabrication shops on the West Coast. “Or, if possible, that’s where you can cut out a sinkhole, and then that area’s gone.”


[3. REALIZE THAT A STONE'S AVAILABILITY DEPENDS AS MUCH ON MOTHER NATURE AS ON YOUR LOCAL STONE AND TILE SETTER'S SHIPPING SCHEDULES.]
The “first cuts” out of a quarry have been bleached by the sun for months longer than the stone behind it. That’s why it may be impossible to find another slab that will perfectly bookend a countertop in your new kitchen. When buying stone, buy all the stone you need at the same time to ensure consistency of the look.

“You can only control so much of the color variation of the stone because it’s a natural product, but there are ways to find slabs that are consistent with each other,” says Deniz Ince, the owner of IGE Stone and Tile in Portland. “We make sure that each batch of slabs is cut from the same block, and that they’re all marked as being from the same batch. That’s the best way to control variation. The changes in the slabs will be minimal when the pieces are from the same block.”