For this job, an out-of-state general contractor needed a marble installer for a commercial wall at the Aritzia store in Los Gatos. Granite countertops and marble aren’t a big part of what we do, so we brought in another subcontractor who specializes in stone, and they did a bang-up job.
The wall was 16 prefabricated marble panels, laser measured and cut to fit together with nothing in the joints. The stone has an Italian look, but I believe it was quarried in Georgia. Panels like these go together like a puzzle, and each one has a specific place and order. We worked from the schematics to set each piece, including the wraparounds and corners, where the edges have to meet exactly for the seams to disappear.
The panels were extremely heavy, and this kind of work can be dangerous. Every lift was planned, and each piece was supported until it was set.
Even laser-measured work doesn’t always match the building it goes into. The big archway turned out to be about half an inch off, so we had to do some fabrication on site to make the stone fit the opening as built. With joints this tight and no grout to hide anything, that half inch mattered, and taking the time to get it right is what makes the finished wall look like one continuous piece.
In the end, the customer was very happy with the result.
Looking back, we underbid this one by about 70 percent. It was probably an $18,000 job, and we bid it at $5,000. That’s a lesson we’ve taken to heart. Stone like this is semi-permanent work, and bidding it at a fraction of its real cost helps no one. We’d rather price a job right and do it well than race to the bottom.
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