Queenstown · Wānaka · Central Otago
Natural stone
Stone is not a tile that happens to be expensive. It is a material with opinions.
What is included
Dry lay and tone sorting before anything is fixed — stone varies box to box, and a floor laid straight from the pallet looks like it was.
Sealed before grouting. Marble and travertine absorb pigment, and grout haze in an unsealed stone is permanent.
White adhesive under light and translucent stone — grey adhesive shadows through and there is no fixing it afterwards.
Vein matching where you have specified it. It is slower work and it is priced as an extra rather than assumed — we will not put it in a quote you did not ask for.
Why this costs what it costs
Half the work happens before the stone goes down
Dry-laying a stone floor to sort tone and vein is a day where nothing is installed. Skipping it is why some expensive stone floors look cheap: the material was right and the sequence was random.
One mistake is unrecoverable
Grout haze in unsealed marble, a grey adhesive shadow, a chipped edge — none of these are repairable. They are prevented, slowly, or they are lived with. We work at the speed the material forgives.
Stone is heavier and more brittle than it looks
Higher breakage allowance, slower cutting, more careful handling. We price for the stone actually behaving like stone.
Questions
- Is marble a bad idea in a bathroom?
- It is a demanding idea, not a bad one. Sealed properly and maintained, it lasts generations. Unsealed, it will stain from shampoo in a month. We will be straight with you about the maintenance before you commit, not after.
- How often does stone need resealing?
- Depends on the stone, the sealer and the traffic — typically every one to three years in a wet area. We will tell you what yours needs before you choose it, not after.