Casteel Stone Design

We bought a condo from the original owner. The developer had hired a Union tile company to install the master bathroom's walk-in shower. The threshold and seats are supposed to be made from slabs of marble, not tiles, because the the way the glass sit on top of them and mold gets into the grout. Also the seat was sloping backwards, so there was always a huge pool of water on it after a shower, and even after removing as much as we could, it still stayed damp way too long, so we decided to fix the problem, by doing it 'right' and replacing the tile with a slabs. Finding glass guys was hard enough, but finding the stone was a real problem. Seems the developer and or the tile suppliers, decided to use a totally unknown tile from some undisclosed middle-eastern country that has only one importer in the U.S. We spent weeks going from stone store to store trying to find a match, but no one had seen the marble before, and nothing looked right set against. There was also the problem of having to buy a whole huge slab when all that we needed was 3 sq feet. I stumbled upon people selling marble remnants on Craigs list and started contacting them. Casteel was very flexible about meeting us and came specially to his office on Saturday to look over his stock with us. He had an unusual stone which wasn't a perfect match, but was the closest we ever saw so decided to buy it from him. He wanted 350 for the stone and the fabrication, which we thought pretty high, given the stone would probably laying out there for years otherwise, but we were desperate enough to say yes. He was seeing another client near us the next day, so he came by to see our place for an installation quote and double check the measurements. He quoted us 700 for the whole job, which included his suggestion of cutting away the tile and sliding the slab under it, instead of ripping off the backing tile and cutting/installing new ones over the seat slab. This would save us a lot of money and a lot of risk. When the day of the install came, everything went pretty well, except for two things. First, Casteel didn't slope the threshold enough, and there is a lot of water that collects on it instead of falling into the shower. The slope on the seat is better, but it too could have been done better. Finally, we are looking at the job and noticed the jagged edge between the seat and the cut away tiles, which could not be grouted, because it was too ugly, it had to be caulked. He asked if I was going to do the caulk, which was a surprise to me since I thought he was in for the whole job. He asked for 25 bucks to come back out when he was in town after the sealant dried. And when he came back he put in the wrong color and type of caulk. I had to rip it out and find the color match (through the developer again,) and do it again. So, would I work with him again? Yes. Would I do it differently, Yes.