In article , (Todd H.) wrote:

Steve Henderson writes:

One tip... BEFORE you go to Home Depot and request a quote, find out
who THEIR supplier is, and go directly to them. If you wait until
after the HD quote, they won't be able to help you because of their
partnership with HD... the HD markup adds a lot.

Big understatement.

Good advice all around Steve.

I'd skip HD all together, actually. Just go to a home show in the
area. Ask everyone selling granite "Who does your fabricating? Where
do you get your slabs?" At a home show I went to recently, there were
12 folks selling granite, 2 were fabricators. The other 10 companies
contracted to those 2 fabricators for thier fab work!

Also ask if they do their cuts in a fabrication facility, or on-site.
Go with the folks working at the fab.

--
Todd H.
http://toddh.net/

Better yet just check the yellow pages. There are lots of small
fabricators around.

We've had granite for over five years and we absolutely love it.

I did find out the hard way that it is not impervious to citric acid.
Somehow a piece of lime ended up behind the toaster oven and probably
sat there for a week before it was discovered during routine cleaning.
It actually etched the surface of the granite. Other than that, we've
spilled all kinds of things on the counters, placed hot pots and pans on
them, and abused them in many other ways. They still look as good as
the day they were installed. There are no scratch marks, pitting,
dulling or any other defects. And they're very easy to clean.