Have you tried Daltile? We did a renovation through Airoom and that is where we purchased our granite. They have a huge selection.

Thanks, kathyski. Do they also do soapstone?

I do not have direct experience with this soapstone fabricator (I wanted granite for my kitchen), but the name has come up several times on this forum, so I thought I'd mention it, since you haven't gotten much responses. It's Humming Bird Soapstone in Glen Ellyn, IL. As I said, I don't have direct knowledge, but it may be worth a phone call or visit.

Here is a link that might be useful: Humming Bird Soapstone

Appreciate the info on Humming Bird. Will check them out....thanks!

If anyone else knows any other recommendations, I'd be grateful.

I used Humming Bird and was very happy working with them.
But I got quotes from Praire Plus in Oak Park and Rock Tops in Crete. Corna Kitchen in Elmwood Park is another one. There is also a supplier on Lake St., Terrazo that can put you in touch with some fabricators.

That's a lot of good leads, uafly1...thanks! Why did you choose Humming Bird over the others? Price? Service? Slab selection?

Also, anyone have any experience with the soapstone from Damar in Northbrook?

Our kitchen designer sourced our particular granite from MGSI in Skokie - they have tons of photos on their website and do carry/fabricate soapstone. http://www.marble-granites.com/gallery.aspx

Our kitchen designer also sources from Damar ... while we did not get our granite from them, we are actually getting a stainless steel liner bar tile through them. They seem to be a reputable source, and anyway, he has been dealing with them for years.

Well, it's not the in Chicago area, but I just mailed ordered DIY slabs from M. Texiera and am having my carpenter do the installation. It turned out to be half the price of the local fabricators/suppliers in the Portland area. Might be something to look into.

I'm assuming you can't pick your slabs if you mail order DIY?

Portland Renovation, are you in the Portland, OR area? If you have them, could you post pics of your soapstone?
I have decided on using M. Texiera as well for my soapstone, however was recently at a local Portland showroom and they said soapstone was hard to come by lately......not sure why. Did you have any concerns with this company?
Thanks in advance for any advice!

The prices were generally the same, about $100-$125/sq installed. My space was not huge so the price difference was a couple of hundred dollars from the lowest to the highest.

Char with Praire Plus was very nice to deal with. You could make an appointment to see their slabs at the yard. They only had a bluish stone available at the time

Rocktops mailed me a sample of what they had available, their price was the highest, was not crazy the sample stone.

Angela with HummingBird was the most enjoyable dealer to work with. When I went to see their slabs, I just knew that was the stone I wanted. Then I wanted to redo my cabinents because their woodwork is amazing. For my next house!

I went to Corna for my tile and learned they had soapstone as well. At that point mine had already been installed.

Here is the link for the thread on my kitchen

Here is a link that might be useful: My kitchen

Oldhousegal, I am in Portland, Ore! I haven't gotten the soapstone yet -- just ordered it on Monday. They told me it will take 2-3 days to leave the warehouse, and then another 5-10 days of transit. Our cabinets will be here in 2 weeks, so I was holding off on getting the soapstone until we had an ETA on the cabinets so that we didn't have too much construction stuff clogging up our staging area (the garage). I will post pics once the stone comes, though! I ordered 4 slabs of Barocca.

I was also told by several places that soapstone was not readily available in Portland, but you can find it at Pentel (on NW Yeon). You can visit their warehouse and see the slabs in person -- the slabs are beautiful, but they only have one variety. The frustrating thing is that Pentel only works with fabricators, so they will give you a list of fabricators, but won't tell you how much a slab costs! Annoying. Our contractor has an account through CFM, who is one of the fabricators on the list at Pentel, so we asked them for a quote -- they said it was going to be $4,700 for the soapstone, including installation. Ordering from Texiera and getting my carpenters (who I love) to cut and install will cost about half of that.

So far I have been pretty impressed with Texiera. They have been very responsive to my emails, and phone calls. The sample pack that I ordered arrived within a few days, and they were happy to answer all of my questions. I ordered my slabs, but could not find a way to order the tinted epoxy w/o ordering the entire DIY kit (my carpenters have the necessary blades already), so I emailed them -- they got back to me within 10 minutes and added just the epoxy to my order.