Stone and Quartz Installation

Nothing Gets Templated Over Old Tile

The slab half of the job starts the day the deck is finished, not before. That is the one rule we do not bend, and it follows directly from what tear outs teach you.

A digital template reads the surface it is placed on. Template over the existing tile and you have captured a plane that is about to be demolished, plus whatever the old grout lines and an out of square corner were contributing. Template on a new, levelled deck with the sink physically present and the numbers describe the kitchen you are actually going to have.

Levelling Comes First

Once the old deck is gone we run a level across the open cabinet run. Riverside tract kitchens from the seventies and eighties are commonly out by an eighth to a quarter of an inch across a long wall, and on slab on grade construction some of that is the slab itself having moved a little over the decades. Tile and a thick grout line absorbed it invisibly.

Stone will not. A slab bridging a low spot bears on two points instead of the whole run, which is exactly the loading that opens a seam or cracks a narrow section beside a cooktop. So boxes get shimmed, rails get packed where needed, and the new three quarter inch deck goes down flat.

Choosing the Material Honestly

Both quartz and granite work well here, but they behave differently and the difference is a Riverside specific one.

Engineered quartz is a mineral aggregate held together by a resin binder. Resin is a polymer, and polymers respond to prolonged ultraviolet exposure. Under a big unshaded west facing kitchen window, in a climate that delivers long hot afternoons most of the year, some quartz colours can shift tone over several years. Whites and pale greys show it soonest. Granite, being rock all the way through, is indifferent to it.

So the question we ask is not which one is better. It is where the run sits relative to that west sun. A galley wall with no direct exposure can have whichever quartz you like. A peninsula sitting in the afternoon glare is a better argument for natural stone, or for a darker quartz, or for doing something about the window.

Natural stone asks for sealing. Most granites want a penetrating sealer at install and a re check every year or two, tested by leaving a small pool of water on the surface for ten minutes and seeing whether it darkens the stone. Quartz needs no sealing at all. That is a genuine advantage of quartz and we say so.

Seams, Cutouts and Remnants

Seam position is agreed at template and marked on the drawing. Our preference is to place a seam in the middle of a run rather than through the sink cutout, since the narrow stone bridges at the front and back of an undermount opening are the weakest geometry on the whole top. Where a seam must land near the sink we rod the opening, setting steel or fibreglass into a routed channel in the underside to carry the span.

Undermount sinks get mechanical support, not adhesive alone. A cast iron sink in particular needs proper cradling under it.

Remnants are worth asking about. A single L shaped run in a small kitchen or a bathroom vanity can often be cut from a slab yard offcut for considerably less than a full slab, and we will go and walk the racks for one if the piece suits your kitchen.

Install Day

The slab arrives cut, edged and dry fitted at the shop. Setting, seaming, sink mounting and plumbing reconnection is normally a single day, and in most kitchens you have a working sink again that evening. Silicone at the wall rather than grout, because a stone to drywall joint needs to be able to move.

Call (951) 702-1038 for a figure on your run.