I would shop around for different fabricators. I've had luck telling the fabricator what I'd like to spend, and negotiating from there. I'm getting 30 sf for $2000.00 of minas soapstone for my perimeter counters. Good luck!

I am paying $84/sq foot for the stone and fabrication for barroca soapstone. That is what they call "regular" priced stone. My fabricator has other types of soapstone which cost more per sq foot.

You're probably already aware of this, but if you love the look and want to keep the price down, you can DIY it. We had our soapstone shipped to us from Dorado in Denver, but M. Teixeira and others also offer this option. You can order them as slabs, or you can order them pre-fabbed.

Here are some of M. Tex's DIY slabs. They offer various sales all the time, and their prices include shipping. (Our Dorado order included two very large Beleza slabs and a prefabbed 8x4' carrera top, and they charged us $500 for shipping and $100 for the A-frame/crating. I'm sure M. Tex builds the shipping into the price.)

One thing I forgot to mention...my first quote for soapstone was from another fabricator which I think usually did granite. I believe they were getting their soapstone from some other supplier because the installed price was nearly twice what I am paying. Mine is from M. Teixeira in SF (which by the way is being installed tomorrow!!!!!!)

Ours is the same (price, stone, and I imagine fabricator!) as itsallaboutthefood, and was the cheapest we could find where we live. But there were a couple of soapstone places that sold it by the slab and then charged per square foot for fabrication. That got crazy expensive for our tiny kitchen since we only needed half a slab at most, but for a big kitchen if you could use most of a slab or two, it might turn out to be much less costly since the actual per square foot cost was less (we just would have had to buy many more square feet than we needed).

Thanks for the info. My husband is jazzed about doing at least part of it himself. One of the counter tops is curved, so that's increasing the price some. I'm not sure just what kind of soapstone he quoted. We should definitely ask.

I am paying $70 per sq ft installed with M Tex in Denver. Lots of competition out there these days, but M Tex only charges for the amount of material actually used - not the entire slab.

I did visit their fab facility and saw a huge 'DIY' job in progress...they were shipping it out of state. I was impressed.

Template today!

I got mine from Dorado and I think it was $70-75 a square foot installed.

It was black minus soapstone: so $91 dollars a square foot for 3 cm thick if the fabricator made it. This fabricator will also sell us DIY half slabs of that same stuff at $44 per square foot.

We paid about $85 per sq foot for minas.

I paid about $75/sq.ft. for mine, installed in St. Paul. I can't tell you exactly what the name of stone it is, but it's one of the harder ones I looked at, is quite dark, and comes from Brazil. The supplier's card says they have a link to Dorado Soapstone so I suppose it's one of theirs.

I found after the fact that the stone I chose was pricier than the original bid allowed, but I don't know by how much. No one thought to bring that up until after it was in, so I didn't pay any more. I think my contractor and the fabricator fought over, ... er, came to some agreement about, ... that one.

We paid paid $1900 for 24 sq feet fully fabricated, shipped to our door and ready to install - that included an extra $175 to get it out to the boonies where I live.

DH could have done all the fabricating, but decided for the cost, he'd rather pay them. We did the install ourselves and it was very easy even with a few seams (no long ones though).

lots and lots of Youtube vidios showing how to work with it on the net.

I was not even considering soapstone until I learned we could DIY it for way less than I thought. But after DH got to thinking about it and looking at the prices, he decided to let them do it all. Mostly he didn't want to do the work as he's got the tools and talent for it.

Our kitchen renovation needs only 22 square feet of soapstone. My kitchen guy quoted me $86/square for Brazilian. Being that I'm in Arlington, Virginia, I asked about Alberene soapstone which is quarried here in Virginia. His counter sub came back with $154/square. Both amounts are for cut, shipped and installed.

Is Alberene really twice as expensive as Brazilian? Or is the counter sub trying to scare me into staying with his stock (which he probably already has since my small job can probably be done with remnants)?

Mine ended up about the same. My fabricator sells by the slab and does not resell or keep the remnants and the first estimate was going to cost 800 more cuz they said I needed 3 slabs (75 feet). But they did it with two and gave me some money back. So I was thrilled it was only 91 a foot and not more, like I thought it was gonna be. It is beautiful and they did a great job. They are the only fabricator where I live (Central AR) so it's not like I could shop around. DIY (for the counters) was not an option for us...

Mine is $96 sq ft for a 21 SF island top. Had I had he cash this summer it would have been about $10 cheaper.