Have you seen samples of those you like? Until you've made the bottom line decision, I would hold off trying to locate anything. Why put yourself thru more aggravation than necessary?

Yes, I have seen some in person. I traveled out of state last year to look. I like Sea Pearl, Taj Mahal, White Macaubus Cross Cut, and Madra Perla. It's going to come down to availability.

I'm doing white cabinets and a stained island.

Your choices all sound good. Why not make calls to stone yards in a 2 hour drive and check on availability? who will fabricate for you? That person may make suggestions.

neroselover:

This doesn't seem like a good idea.

How are you going to confirm you like the slabs before shipping? An electronic picture? To where will the slabs be shipped? Your fabricator? Your home?

If I were selling slabs and shipping them, I'd have all your money in my bank account before anyone even thought of loading them. You'd pay for the slabs and shipping and neither would be refundable for any reason.

My only advice is that every single slab has significant variation. If you were to have them shipped and you didn't like it, you'd better make sure that you're able to ship them back and not eat a giant shipping charge. Pictures simply don't do these slabs any justice, and its extremely hard to get a feel for the way they look. I'd either find some type of local place that has them, or go with something else.

This is coming from someone that went to several major distributors and perhaps 10 fabricators with their own stock as well.

Bookworm -- I would gladly do that, but we don't have any stone yards within 2 hours of us. I'm very jealous of all of you that have that option. Where I live people pick their countertop based off of a small sample. There is no going to the stone yard to select a stone. It is unheard of here and most would find that very odd to go and select their stone.

TB151 -- I am aware that there will be variations. But, if my option is no quartzite vs. quartzite with some variations that I don't like quite as well, I'll take the quartzite.

There is no local place that has them. I would love to go to visit a ton of stone yards to pick the perfect slab, but that is not be feasible. We just don't have that available to us.

If I did have quartzite available to me locally, I would not have put out a request on here looking for a place that would ship. I would have gone and purchased.

When I asked at one of the places in my town the other day if they had access to quartzite, she said she would check into it. She followed up with an email later saying that she was confused because they carried quartz -- Dal Tile, Caesarstone, Etc., and those were the same thing as quartzite, so she didn't understand what I wanted. UGH! I had to explain the difference.