Consumer w/ question about faulty install- input appreciated

[Dan R.]

Machines do not make someone an expert stone mason.
Pushing buttons is far from actually working the stone.
Reading does not make anyone an excellent stone mason.

Working with stone and gaining experience makes people excellent stone masons. There are no shortcuts.
People buy machines for productivity. A piece finished by an expert stone mason will always be superior to that done with a machine, imo. My proof would be the seam/book match posted by Jeff vs the one done by your fabricator's machine.

[JeffC]

Machines do not make someone an expert stone mason.
Pushing buttons is far from actually working the stone.
Reading does not make anyone an excellent stone mason.

Working with stone and gaining experience makes people excellent stone masons. There are no shortcuts.
People buy machines for productivity.

A breath of fresh air to see these words in print Dan. It is apparent that consumers equate machines with quality and that's just not it at all. It is simple to pump out job after job of tract work and proves you have good sales people. Putting out quality custom work is an entirely different animal.

I want to apologize if I came of a little harsh, not my intention. I agreed with the body of your post completely as well. Your follow up posts have completely summed up my thoughts on all of this. I am much better at expressing myself with spoken words vs. typed It just really gets at me when people cant stand behind their word and hide behind a contract. These types of contractors give all craftsmen a bad name at the end of the day.

To the Original Poster,
I wouldn't want a refund at all. I would want them to take the stone back and give me a full refund so I can go somewhere else. You know better than me(being a lawyer) if that is worth the hassle or even possible. Short of that Dan certainly has the best solution, hire an outside party to fix it. Get bids to fix it, do better homework and find the person best suited for the job. Then negotiate with the fabricator for the cost of repair plus refund for incompetent work. I certainly wish you the best and hope this gets resolved to your satisfaction. Please continue to update us.

Jeff

[Dan R.]

Jeff, no worries here. The keyboard is crude for communicating, imo. It is easy to be taken the wrong way. I was not offended at all. On posts like these, there are so many avenues of discussion. It is easy to be talking about 2 completely different things at the same time.

I agree, people should stand by there work.
And
No craftsman ever touched this job, imo.

[Alex DiPietro]

Not that I'm defending anything but to compare a bookmatched seam of some typhoon type granite to a multiple slab mitered with waterfalls out of expensive white marble is like saying "hey the icing on my cupcake is flawless, it should be the same on your 5tier wedding cake". Frivolous comparison IMO.

Your kitchen is still pretty badass.

That being said, they screwed up. That would never be accepted by my clients. It's a mistake. Insurance may cover employee negligence....

[steven nenzel]

IMO, like Dan said, this fabricator is in over his head. If your seams were tight and properly colored most of your issues would likely disappear. I can't advise on the discount but I like Dan's idea, hire someone very competent to fix the work and you may be surprised at what can be achieved. Perhaps paying to have it fixed first would be better than negotiating the discount up front.

[ageless]

How many of you would take the challenge of fixing this work? I have a rule of not touching others work and many know where that can lead.

[Jeff H.]

Many thoughtful comments by our experienced fabricators here. There are many issues here and they have been addressed in detail. The only thing I would add is I agree 100% with Rey. I wouldn't touch this job. Some of the problems can't be corrected and I would be a little afraid being the client is a lawyer. No insult intended, just 25 plus years of experience spotting red flags. I would only do it as a complete re-do.

[Ken Lago]

I would have to hire a lawyer if I were to take on this job, as Jeff said personal experience and red flags make this an easy one to pass onto my favorite competitor.

[RBatstone]

If this was one of my jobs we would be redoing. If they said they we're going to book match then they should have it close not 4omm off. From glue they use they must have little experience with white marble and new processes.

[Darryl Miller]

If it were one of our jobs it would have stopped in the shop when the first problem of misalignment occurred. Sure, it's easy to say that when giving an opinion on someone else's work but that is the way we would have handled it to keep it from getting to where it is now. If it got to this point with us we would be looking at starting over if needed to correct it. Some here will agree with this and some won't. This is not the worst job I have ever seen in spite of the issues listed. But if I wouldn't accept it in my own home I wouldn't expect my customer to accept it in theirs. We take a lot of risks in this business that customers are unaware of. Most of the time all goes well. Every now and then, it goes bad. Really bad.

I hope you can successfully resolve this with your fabricator without having to take legal recourse. While I typically have a no discount policy to resolve dissatisfaction, there are times when this is the best option for both parties.

Good luck in your resolution and let us know how this turns out please. There are many of us here that would truly like to know the outcome. Not to be nosy, but because we all learn from these situations. There is really no way to put an exact number on how your post has impacted fabricators here and helped them to learn what to do up front to avoid having one of their jobs get to this point. Thank you for reaching out to us here at the SFA.

[sparrow]

On jobs like this using materials like these we always factor an extra slab into the price. If we don't need it, great. If we do then we are covered. As soon as the problems with the book matching were seen we would have bought another slab in order to correct it. That being said, there are many issues here past the book matching of the slabs. Trying to remedy the issues here as a third part is a no-win situation. Would never put myself in the position of trying to correct someone else's work that the client is so unhappy with. That being said hopefully you can find a middle ground that is acceptable and fair to both parties.

[Siran808]

Again -thanks for all the excellent input this has been a great educating experience. As I first stated - I'm trying to be reasonable, and with all my post, trying to be factual and not emotional. Seeing the wide range of responses from other Professional in the business has confirmed to me that this is indeed a tough "grey area" spot I'm in.

So my fabricator is stating that once they got one of the slabs on the cutting board and had a chance to better inspect the stone, they realized one of the corners was "soft" (i'm assuming brittle) and given the veining and what they had to work with, they did the best they could. Unfortunately one of the folks in the shop made a determination to continue without notifying management, who in turn would have notified me. However, given that we utilized almost all the material, they believe it would have been impossible to bookmatch even if they called me, and thus they don't believe they should be responsible for redoing the counter or giving me any significant discount with respect to the bookmatch.

Does for soft corner sound like a reasonable explanation? Because if it does then I'd be a little more sympathetic regarding the proposed discount I mention below.

For a job where the fabrication labor was around $10K they've offered me $2,250 - a number which I didn't hesitate to reject. I feel like they didn't maximize the beauty of the stone as intended (the reason for which I was willing to pay more for the material) and I'm left holding the bag on a project I wouldn't pay even $12K for had I known the result ahead of time.

Thoughts?

@ Jeff - no insult taken As for having someone else redo the work, If I were another fabricator I would understandably be hesitant to finish someone else's job. I'm sure you could agree to no liability or responsibility in the event something went wrong with the fix, but better to let someone else deal with the problem.

[Dan R.]

Poster, Check your private message box.

Soft corner? Never heard that term before.

As far as working on other people's work, why not? I am in business to make money. Get a waiver signed, fix as best you can and get paid. Isn't that the goal of being in business?

[Kowboy]

Siran808:

Have them bring their truck and cash. They give you a cash refund and load their "work" into the truck.

[ageless]

I'm curious what a soft corner is too. Never heard the term.

[Siran808]

By "soft" i'm interpreting that to mean that part of the material was brittle or possible prone to breaking- as they also stated that they couldn't use all the material without risk of it breaking. I asked them if this wasn't something they could have caught before we did the layout, but they stated that sometime weakness in the material are not possible to detect until its on the cutting board?

Putting aside semantics, does this sound like BS?

[Jon_sambor]

Can you post some more pictures of the counter? Are there cabinets on the other side of the upper island level? Whats the over hang from the cabinets? Whats the thickness of the drywall on the knee wall? Can you show a picture of the two splashes?

From looking at it it maybe possible to shift the right piece forward about 1 1/8 and cut off the the front edge. The gap in back would be covered by the splash.The left piece could be shifted back or the back cut off the thickness of the drywall. Cabinets would need to be deinstalled and the drywall taken off off so cabinets can butt up against the stud to maintain the overhang in front. This would even out the book match. As far as the splash need more pics.

[DavidL]

I am interpreting soft corner as a brittle or broken corner where the alignment pins are for their cutting solution. Some machine use a 3 point alignment system that works in conjunction with 3 points on the photo frame they are using for slabsmith. If when the machine operator loaded the slab on the table and broken the corner where the alignment pin was and just shifted the material over slightly that can easily explain the mistake at the source. At that point had the operator informed his supervisor then the issue could have been brought to everyone's attention to try and come up with a work around.

That in itself doesn't guarantee satisfaction but it does stop the "surprise" factor at installation.

[ash20ash]

I am interpreting soft corner as a brittle or broken corner where the alignment pins are for their cutting solution. Some machine use a 3 point alignment system that works in conjunction with 3 points on the photo frame they are using for slabsmith. If when the machine operator loaded the slab on the table and broken the corner where the alignment pin was and just shifted the material over slightly that can easily explain the mistake at the source. At that point had the operator informed his supervisor then the issue could have been brought to everyone's attention to try and come up with a work around.

That in itself doesn't guarantee satisfaction but it does stop the "surprise" factor at installation.

This

Happens alot with use. Some issue with the slab dont show themselves until the slab is horizontal. Especially the bottom corners because they tend to get abused while moving the slabs.
I'm assuming the saw man shifted the cut line and hit cycle start. Not thinking about vein match.

legit excuse IMO

[scott m]

One of the reasons I got out of stone......Most things that consumers buy are perfect. This is however a natural piece of stone, that has inherent natural properties that can be considered beauty or defects. This job, while not the best I have seen, is certainly not a bad job, just some unfortunate problems. Overall it is a very technical job and most of it is pretty good. There are tricks of the trade to overcome some of the issues. However, I feel right now you are concentrating on the stone itself. When the rest of the kitchen comes together, the focus will switch and you will probably be less aware of the defects you pointed out. If you buy a new car and it has a dent or a scratch it is black and white, this however is much more subjective. Just know that there is alot worse work out there. BTW I also used the vein matching software, and while it is a good tool, I can do a much better job on a manual saw. Sometimes the computer one would be off by a little bit, not sure why, but it would be. I was never off on a manual one. Its very difficult to educate a consumer to what exactly is to be expected as well.

[Justzack]

Please post more pictures of the complete job so we can see everything and not just the vein match.

[Siran808]

As requested. My caveat is that I asked them to stop work once the backsplash and book match issues were spotted, and of course no post install work has been done. So please keep in mind to the extent some of these details can be fixed. I will say that a number of the mitered edges look "dirty"

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Enjoy

[Jon_sambor]

How many slabs was your project and how much did you pay for it?

[Siran808]

3 slabs - in total the project was $22K (including the perimeter which is a white quartz that I have no complaints about). The Calacatta Gold portion of the project came out to just under $18K.

BTW this is the seam for the white quartz material. From what I can tell its fine. I asked why the same couldn't be done with the marble, and was told that it wasn't possible due to how the material cut.

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[UnitedMarble]

Not that I'm defending anything but to compare a bookmatched seam of some typhoon type granite to a multiple slab mitered with waterfalls out of expensive white marble is like saying "hey the icing on my cupcake is flawless, it should be the same on your 5tier wedding cake". Frivolous comparison IMO.

Your kitchen is still pretty badass.

That being said, they screwed up. That would never be accepted by my clients. It's a mistake. Insurance may cover employee negligence....

After seeing the latest set of photos, I have to agree with Alex on this one; a customer of mine would never accept that kind of workmanship in their kitchen.