Recommendations for Countertop Installers in the Br/St. George Area

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price per square foot for quartzite

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It depends on whether you buy fabricator stock or you have to buy slabs. Depending on your layout you may have to buy 2 slabs at that square footage. The bigger end of quartzite slabs is around 70sqft. If you have to buy slabs you are looking at $115-$130/ft for mid range stuff (Taj Mahal, Mont Blanc, etc.). Cristallo is a lot higher. There is insane markup if you buy slabs from a wholesaler like Triton. They won’t even discuss pricing with you. Fabricators are all over the place with how much they markup so I’d get 3-4 bids.

If you can buy fabricator stock, it will be cheaper. I’ve seen prices less than $100/ft for fabricator stock.

So in the countertop world, you have fabricators/installers, retailers, and wholesalers. Wholesalers sell whole slabs to fabricators, who cut the stone to your specifications and ultimately install it. Retailers will sell slabs to the public. The only retailer I've checked out was Stone Gallery in NOLA.

Some local examples of wholesalers are Triton (BR & NOLA), Tuscan (NOLA), Omicron (NOLA), and Select Stone (BR). They have big warehouses with slabs of stone and also keep a pretty current online inventory. You go to their warehouses and pick out slabs that you want. The wholesaler then gets with the fabricator you pick and you buy the stone from the wholesaler through the fabricator. The pro of taking this route is you can pick literally whatever slab of stone you want. The primary negative is that you have to buy the entire slab if you go this route, so it's inherently more expensive. To me, the whole system is kinda bullshite because the wholesaler won't discuss pricing with you at all, so you have no idea what the slab really costs because the price is marked up by the fabricator.

The alternative is to pick a fabricator who keeps stock stone, or an inventory, like you said. Some keep more than others. A lot of fabricators will sell you "stock" stone, or stone that they keep in inventory, by the foot. This benefits you from a cost standpoint because sometimes you can get away with not purchasing the whole slab, so it's much cheaper. The downside to this is that the fabricator is generally going to structure your install and fabrication to minimize waste, so you may wind up with unnecessary seams. Fabricators also keep remnants or cutoffs from other slabs that you can get for pretty cheap or for the cost of install. This only really works if you're looking for a small piece though. Most fabricators keep a few types of quartz and granite in stock, but fewer varieties of quartzite just because it's more expensive and I guess people are generally more particular about what they want when they're spending that kind of money.

I knew absolutely nothing about this business 6 weeks ago but I'm dealing with it on my own right now for a new construction so I've learned a lot about the whole game. I'm happy to share any other info I can to help. FWIW I've narrowed my fabricators down to Crescent City Countertops (most likely) or GNL in Slidell. Not sure if either service the Baton Rouge area but both have pretty extensive stock quartzite inventory.

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I do. Very very good friends with them. I was there yesterday talking about next boat we’re getting

We used

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Assured Flooring and Countertops

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for the install, they even had an extra piece and added a matching window sill.

We picked out our quartzite at Tuscan on Pecue Ln.