Engineered Stone Countertops

“Perfection Set In Stone”

Working with the Stone Slab

You heard the phrase “practice makes perfect”. It means pursuing excellence through a continuous process of improvement. Most of Nathan’s master design skills are not taught in the classroom or through books. It’s taught on the job through trial and error, and the designer must be receptive to learn something new on every countertop job.

Since stone is very unforgiving when mistakes are made, a countertop designer spends a considerable amount of time and effort planning and rearranging pieces of surfaces in his mind and on paper. There are several constraints in designing with the stone slab, including the stone slabs’ imperfections that may have non-uniform vein patterns, and also, cutting the stone may cause alignment problems that affect the exact flow of individual veins. The countertop design must apply the vein patterns to all the counter surfaces, full height backsplash, waterfalls panels, edge profiles, etc. 

Hence, a countertop designer must patiently conduct exploration and experimentation before the stone is cut. When the design is finalized, then and only then is the stone is cut and polished by machines to the exact dimensions specified in the design’s template. After 25 years of experience, it is no wonder that Nathan’s countertops are always “Perfection Set In Stone” .

Revealing the Character of Stone

A top-notch designer brings out the “Wow” in luxury countertops, making them truly spectacular and in a higher class of luxury. As a gifted artist, Nathan studies the vein flow, patterns, artistic composition in granite slab, marble slab, quratzite slab or quarts slab and stone imperfections and uses the natural character of stone to design a harmonious flow across multiple surfaces. The nuance of each stone slab is unique and requires exploration to cut various regions of the stone and arrange them, so that the character (in the natural stone, as well as, in engineered stone like quartz) is aesthetically revealed. It comes down to having the talent to do it.

Design Challenges

Nathan creates designs in 3 dimensions and across multiple luxury countertops. He needs to consider the stone’s composition, loss due to blade thickness, folding of patterns being cut into two separate pieces that overlap when assembled at right angles, precision tolerance between 1/16 and 1/8 of an inch and the allocated regions of the stone for different surfaces to keep the vein pattern flowing in the same direction without conflict. Also, some countertop materials need an 1/8 of inch for expansion. Not only must Nathan visualize the final product, but he must also assemble a collection of pieces to make the best artistic sense before the countertop is fabricated and cut into individual pieces and later assembled.

Price Trade-offs

An excellent countertop design must contend with using all of the stone slab with minimal waste. Suppose the designer cannot effectively cut a slab to extract a natural vein pattern for multiple surfaces with minimal waste. In that case, the project may become more expensive and require additional slabs. The cost can easily double due to the designer’s lack of expertise. Nathan must design each piece to be a surface component that functions within the entire countertop system with little waste. He has done it many times.

Dealing with Nature’s Imperfections

Nathan must do it “As Perfect As Possible”. The design implementation can never be perfect because the stone slab has imperfections, defects, and discontinuity areas resulting from its natural composition and vein patterns, which change abruptly. Nathan must compensate for these flaws in his design to create a finished product that is free from chaos and conflict caused by clashes of vein flow or an overactive pattern. He must prevent two surfaces from looking disjointed. The countertop design must resolve these issues and be worked out in Nathan’s mind before he makes the template that guides the machine’s cutting of the stone.

Countertop System

For large kitchens or bathrooms, Nathan employs an approach he calls a Countertop System. This approach defines the job as a functioning system of different surfaces that may include various levels of countertops, backsplashes, waterfall side panels, islands, and wall cladding. A countertop system can comprise a large number of surfaces spread across a room.

It can be a challenging design effort to minimize the number of slabs and reduce cutting waste, while creating a robust design for discontinuous surface areas. The design must exhibit a pleasing directional flow with a coherent and harmonious pattern on multiple surfaces. Since each stone slab is unique, it requires a designer with more experience and advanced artistic talent to create a design from different slab compositions that must work artistically together as a natural, seamless, and intentional design. This complex design work requires a talented designer like Nathan to produce world-class countertop systems that are the envy of anyone who appreciates them.

Best Pricing in Tampa Bay

Many customers think Nathan’s best prices on countertops will be high because of the personalized and value-added service he provides for each countertop project.

 His business goal is to keep costs down especially the countertop material prices by shopping in his partnership network for the best price. His network offers a vast variety and inventory of engineered and natural stone slabs to choose from. Each countertop job is project managed by Nathan to control the workflow in the process and using the relevant business partners to secure the stone slab, countertop fabrication and countertop installation.

Nathan is the sole customer contact for each countertop job and will manage the assignment of work in his network using the best resource available to do the job at the best price. Compare countertop prices and you will find you get more value with Nathan.

Nathan is involved with every step of the process to make sure the inputs for each step are ready to go by his quality standards. The output results of the countertop fabrication are checked for defects and exact measurements. After fabrication, the countertop components are assembled during countertop installation with a precision fit and personally quality assured by Nathan.

This approach provides a very cost-effective way to achieve excellent results. Nathan’s management style is from the perspective of a master craftsman and a person well respected in the industry.