Guides
The answers, in full
The questions we are asked most often by people about to commission a top, a table or a stone supply. Answered by the company that picks the block at the quarry and cuts it in house.
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Prices
Who owns the leftover stone from your slab?
Why you pay for the whole slab and not only for the piece installed, how much material is really left, who owns the offcut by default, and how to reserve it in writing.
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Materials
Stone defect or natural feature?
With natural stone the line between a defect and a characteristic is drawn by a document agreed before cutting: what the European standard treats as typical of the stone, what to check at delivery, how long you have to object, and who pays.
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Materials
Can stone be used where food is handled?
Natural stone does not appear in the list of materials for which Europe has written a specific food-contact measure: what applies to a bar counter, a buffet or a stone worktop, and which document to ask for before ordering.
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Technical
Which edge profile should a stone top have?
Why the edge is where a stone top breaks first, which edge profiles actually exist, which one forgives everyday use, and how to recognise a well-made edge.
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Stone
Which finish for a marble table top?
Polished, honed, satin or brushed: what each one actually changes in the stone you chose, and why the sample has to be in the final finish.
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Maintenance
Can a burn mark be removed from a quartz worktop?
A burn is not a stain: it is the resin that has changed state. How to tell them apart, what really comes off, and why a composite cannot be re-polished.
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Technical
A stone top on your existing table
In most cases it can be done: what a stone top really weighs, how to tell whether the base you own can carry it, and what to do when the answer is no.
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Materials
How do you pick a marble slab?
Slabs from one block are not the same slab. How to view one, how to fix its identity on the order, and what to approve before the cut.
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Materials
Can a quartz countertop go outdoors?
Engineered quartz is stone held together by resin, and outdoors it is the resin that fails. What the warranties say, and which ranges are the exception.
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Technical
How long can a marble top be in one piece?
Slab sizes depend on how the block is sawn. Where the real limit sits, where a seam belongs, and what open-book matching does.
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Materials
Which stone can be used on a boat?
Any marble can be used on a boat. The problem is not salt, it is weight, and a lightweight slab solves it: 8 kg per square metre instead of 54.
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Care
Can a chipped or broken marble top be repaired?
A chipped, scratched or cracked marble top can almost always be recovered, and stains come out. We collect the piece, work on it and bring it back.
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Materials
How much does a stone top weigh, and what has to carry it
How much a marble or quartzite top weighs per square metre, what the whole table weighs, what reaches the floor, and how it gets indoors.
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Materials
Quartzite or marble? How to tell
A trade name does not tell you what the stone is. The two tests that tell marble from quartzite, and the data to ask for before ordering.
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Design
Backlit onyx: LEDs, light and heat
Why some slabs glow and others stay dark, which LEDs to use and how far from the stone, why the light must not heat the slab, and how the installation is serviced ten years on.
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Technical
Can a marble table live outdoors?
What frost, sun and salt do to stone, which stone to choose, how it is protected and how often the protection is renewed so a polished top stays polished.
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Technical
How thick should a marble table top be
20 or 30 mm, how far it can overhang the base, how often it needs support and what it really weighs: the numbers that decide whether a marble top cracks or lasts a lifetime.
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Care
Marble stains and etching: what comes out and what does not
The dull mark from lemon and the dark patch from oil are two different kinds of damage and come out two different ways. How to tell them apart in thirty seconds, and why a sealer has nothing to do with the first one.
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Pricing
How much does a custom marble table cost
What the price actually depends on, why two quotes for the same table can differ by half, and how much the trading chain between the quarry and your home really costs you.
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Delivery
Who carries the stone top up, and who fits it
Kerbside, to the room or fitted: what the order actually covers, who unloads the lorry, which measurements of the route matter before the slab is cut, and who is liable if the piece arrives broken.
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Fabrication
Why a stone top cracks at the sink and hob cutouts
Why cracks start at the corner of a cutout rather than in the middle of a top, what radius the inside corners need, how much stone must be left around a cutout and between two, and what support and expansion gaps are actually required.
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Technical
A stone worktop over a dishwasher or an oven
Why manufacturers exempt marble and granite from the steam deflector, what steam actually ruins under the worktop, why a dishwasher is never screwed to stone, and how much heat reaches the slab from an oven below.
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Fabrication
Undermount sink on a stone worktop: what actually holds it
Silicone seals and does not hold: what carries the weight of a full bowl, how the cut edge of the opening should be worked, how far the stone should come over the bowl, and why the cabinet below gets wet.
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Design
How far can a stone top overhang without support?
The tables published by fabricators contradict each other: what breaks and where, the one number that actually decides, how cutouts and veins move the limit, and how to support an overhang beyond it.
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Contract
Who supplies a hotel’s stone tops
On a project stone passes through four pairs of hands: who surveys and when, who carries the piece up, who answers for a slab broken on site, and why material is committed on the block.
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Maintenance
Can dull marble be re-polished in place?
Dull can mean etched, scratched or just filmed over: three different faults, and a ten-second check tells them apart. What can be restored in place, why crystallisation cannot be undone, and what the law says about the dust.
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Maintenance
A tap leaking at its base: what gets damaged, and in what order
A leak at the base of a tap follows a sequence: the sealant bead first, then the bearing board, then the stone, then efflorescence and the metal. How to read it from the outside, and what can still be saved at each step.
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Maintenance
A bathroom stone top marks before a kitchen one
Limescale and marble are the same calcium carbonate, and a descaler cannot tell them apart: that is where a circle begins which a kitchen never sees. How it reads on light and dark stone, and what to do before and after the damage.