PRICING STONE
First let me tell you a little bit about pricing in the granite industry. I'm sure you have seen signs along the road that say "GRANITE COUNTERTOPS INSTALLED $25.00 OR $30.00 PER SQ. FT." and wonder why when you get your job priced it doesn't seem to come out like that. Well, basically, it's kind of a scam. Let me explain. First any granite countertops that are being intalled for less than about $40.00-$45.00 per sq. ft. are pre-fabricated pieces ordered from China or somewhere similar. The pieces come in 26" by 96" pre-cut and polished sections; the company will then try to put your job together using as many pieces of that length and width as nescessary. The main problem with this is that the pieces you get that have been pre-fabricated, are polished to a very sub-standard quality, i.e... if you look closely, you can see many swirl scratches in the stone, and they are missing important things such as "steel rods" around the cut outs, the underneath is not polished smooth, and about 90% of the pieces have chips or "blow-outs" in the edges that then must receive a very un-professional looking repair. Basically, you get what you pay for, and by the time you as a customer realize this it is too late.
The next issue with pricing is just plain dishonesty. I'm sure if you have ever gone around town to the stone wholesale yards to look at granite colors then you are familiar with the next problem with granite pricing. You really need to go to the wholesale yards to view all of the stone colors, but at these yards there is no one that can tell you any pricing information, i.e.... you have no way of knowing if your color choice #1 is $55.00 per sq. ft. and your color choice #2 is $178.00 per sq. ft. The reason for this is that almost all of the fabricators have their own formula for determining the price on each specific stone color. So, if you are working with fabricator "BOB" and the stone yard was to tell you that your selection cost $12.00 per sq.ft. wholesale, and then you end up actually using fabricator "BILL" and in his formula he doubles the wholesale cost of the stone, "BILL" will then be very upset at the wholesale yard for uncovering his dishonesty. So the wholesale yards are required by the fabricators to keep the actual price of the stone hidden from you. Ricon does not agree with this or practice this. We will actually show you our pricing lists from the wholesale yards, because our pricing formula is very simple, honest and straight forward. When we price like this it may seem at first that we are more expensive because we do not hide any of our charges and then surprise you at the end of the job, or come up with a bunch of incidental charges that you can not opt out of, such as faucet holes being drilled, or an extra fee to have the exposed edges of the stone polished, which should be included. Now of course with the very wide range of stone colors you can choose from costing anywhere from $5.00 per sq. ft. wholesale, all the way up to $88.00 per sq. ft. wholesale, there are a few exceptions in our pricing formula, most occuring when you are looking at very expensive stone, such as stone that costs more than $25.00 per sq. ft. wholesale. About 85% of the colors you can see at the yards are below $25.00 per sq. ft. wholesale. In the cases where the stone is higher than $25.00 per sq. ft. wholesale the jobs have to be looked at individually to make sure we do not pay more for the stone than we can charge for you job. Mainly because Ricon also does not charge you for the full purchase of the slab, we only charge you for the square footage of your job whether or not it will take two slabs or three does not matter.
Now with all that being said, if you need to figure out how much a granite job will cost you, the main 2 things you need to know is how many "actual" square foot of stone will be laying on top of your cabinets when the job is done, and how much the particular color of stone you are looking at costs. To determine the square footage is pretty simple. Separate your kitchen into rectangle tops and simply figure out the square footage of you countertop space, such as, if you have an L-SHAPED countertop, make sure that you don't cross over the same area twice when you make your rectangle sections. Be sure to add about an inch or two to all of the exposed edges, or overhang areas because granite usually has more overhang than whatever countertop material you have now. Then find out how much the stone color that you are looking at sells for and simply multiply it out, and add in for your "cut-outs", (see examples above).Thats it. There shouldn't be any more added charges unless you want a fancy edge detail or something out of the ordinary.
If you don't want to bother trying to figure that out simply bring Ricon a set of plans for the area you want to put granite on, or a set of cabinet drawings, or for a simple remodel, just sketch a very basic drawing of your kitchen or bathroom and measure the lenghts and widths of the areas and we can take it from there. You can also call Jason at 225-317-2622 and he can walk you through the process of checking the sizes and figuring out what you have, or simply fill out the form below, and he will get back to you as soon as possible.
DID YOU KNOW?
Whether you're a contractor or a customer, with a large job or a very small job, Ricon wants to be your granite fabricator. We will match or beat any reasonable granite quote that you have so that you can use Ricon and be able to get the best quality job for your money. We are not used car salesmen, and we dont want to haggle back and forth about prices with you. We have set prices for everything we do. However, we also do not ever want to lose a job over price. Simply let us know if you have an estimate for your work that is lower than ours and we will review the job and do everything in our power to get the job where you need it to be.
The granite industry has a wide variety of pricing formulas, in fact, I believe every single fabricator prices a totally different way. For this reason Ricon has tried to adopt the simplest formula possible so that everyone can understand it, and customers or contractors will have an easy time figuring out how much their job will cost. Each stone color, whether it is granite, marble, or whatever, sells for a certain price per sq. ft. and most people can approximate or calculate the square footage of their job, (don't forget your backsplashes). In most cases the only additional charges will be the price for making a polished hole in the stone (for an under mounted sink) and/or the price for making a rough non-polished hole in the stone (for a drop in sink or drop in cook top). Add it all together and you have your price. Here are the different charges for our cutouts: {Under mount kitchen sized hole - $250.00} {Under mount medium sized hole - $200.00} {Under mount small (bathroom) sized hole $150.00} {Any sized rough cut drop in type hole - $100.00} So...
If you have a kitchen job that will need about 60 square feet of stone, and you were to choose a stone color that sells for $58.00 per sq. ft. and you have 1 (kitchen under mount hole) and 1 (drop in cooktop hole) you would price your job like this:
EXAMPLE #1
Granite- 58 per sq. ft. x 60 sq. ft. = $3480.00
1 under mount polished hole = $250.00
1 drop in cooktop cutout = $100.00
Aproximate tax = $56.23
Grand total = $3886.23
Let's say you have a bathroom vanity with 4" backsplashes that calculates to be about 23 sq. ft. and it will need 2 under mount holes in it and you were going to choose from Ricon's Remnant pieces. In this example our Remnant is selling for $45.00 per sq. ft. You would price the job like this:
EXAMPLE #2
Granite- 45 per sq. ft. x 23 sq. ft. = $1104.00
2 small under mount holes ($150.00 ea) = $300.00
Grand total (no tax on remnants) = $1404.00
Tax is not charged on labor, so the only time you need to plan on tax is if we are purchasing slabs for your job. Remnant pieces or a job using left overs pieces will not have tax. The tax on the slabs is 9% of the wholesale value of the stone only. It is not tax on the entire total of the job as you can see in Example #1. The tax is much less than you would think and can be calculated by Ricon for you after you have chosen you slabs.
There are things that can add to your total, such as having Ricon put a "fancy edge" on your stone, buying sinks from Ricon to use at your job, buying brackets to use for additional support and having the Lifetime Sealer applied to your stone. Ricon also can tear out your existing countertops for an additional charge. These are a few examples but in most cases your job can be calculated following one of the examples above.
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