What Stone Restoration Costs

Size. How much surface there is to work across. A single vanity and a lobby floor are not the same job.

Damage. How bad it is, and how deep it runs. Light etching caught early is a shallow fix. Deep pitting, where acid has been sitting in the same place for months, means taking more material off to get past it, and that is more work.

The stone. Marble, limestone, travertine, granite, quartzite and terrazzo all behave differently, and there are thousands of variations inside those names. What works on one can damage another, so the approach changes with the stone.

The finish. A polished finish and a honed matte finish are different amounts of work. Neither is wrong. A honed floor hides daily traffic better; a polished entry looks more formal.

All four move the number, which is why two islands the same size can be quoted differently. One needs a polish. The next has deep etching around the sink, a scratch across the middle and two chips on the edge. Pricing those the same would mean overcharging the first customer to cover the second.

Access and timing come into it too. Work in an occupied hotel lobby or a strata building often has to happen overnight or in quiet hours, and that is built into the quote rather than added afterwards.

Nothing is quoted over the phone, and you should be wary of anyone who offers to. Photos flatten depth, so an etch that looks like a light haze in a picture can turn out to be a deep patch that has eaten well into the surface. It takes seeing the stone with the light hitting it sideways.

So the sequence is:

1. You call or send a photo. A photo is often enough to tell you whether you are looking at a stain or an etch, and whether it is worth anyone coming out at all
2. We come and look. Free, no obligation, no call-out fee. We check the stone, how deep the damage runs, the finish it has now and the finish you want
3. The written quote is emailed to you afterwards. Not handed over on the doorstep and no pressure to book on the spot. It comes in writing so you can sit with it, or take it to a strata council or an AGM
4. Nothing gets added later without being quoted to you first. If something turns up once the work starts, you hear about it before it is done, not after

There is no standard answer, and anyone giving you one has not seen your stone.

A single vanity is often a few hours. A large kitchen can run to two days, plus a return visit to seal. A floor is anywhere from a day to a week depending on size and damage, with wood and carpet protected for the duration. You will have the real timeline in the quote before anything starts.

The minimum service call is $495.

Small jobs are often batched together into one day, so if you have two or three things that need doing, mention all of them when you call.

Financing is not offered. Payment is by credit card, e-transfer, cash or cheque.

Send a photo or call 778-862-4998. A photo is enough to tell you whether you are looking at a stain or an etch, and whether it is worth anyone coming out. The visit is free, and so is the written quote that follows it.

It depends on the four things above: size, damage, stone type and finish. What we can tell you is where it starts. The minimum service call is $495, and most single repairs, a chipped edge or one etched ring on a vanity, sit at or near that. A full kitchen or a lobby floor is a different conversation, and it is quoted after we have seen it. What you will not get is a number over the phone that changes once somebody actually looks at the stone.

Because square footage on its own does not tell you how much work there is. Two islands the same size can be a straightforward polish and a full day of repair work, depending on what has happened to them. Pricing them the same means the customer with the easy job pays for the customer with the hard one. Size does affect the price, it is one of the four factors, but it is not the whole answer and quoting on it alone would be wrong more often than right.

Almost always, and the reason is that marble is solid stone the whole way through rather than a finish on top of something else. Etching, dullness and scratching sit in the top layer, thousandths of an inch deep, so taking that layer down and bringing the finish back leaves you with the stone you already own, looking the way it did. Replacement means templating, fabrication, plumbing and living without a kitchen while you wait. Restoration costs a fraction of that. It stops being the answer when a slab is cracked right through or a section has broken away.

Age on its own is not the problem. We work on entry floors, fireplace surrounds and vanities in character homes across Vancouver that are decades old and have never been restored, and most of them come back. What decides it is whether the damage is in the surface, which is fixable, or structural, which is not. Years of neglect usually means more material has to come off to get past the wear, so it is a bigger job, not an impossible one.

No. The on-site look is free, there is no call-out fee and no trip charge, and there is no obligation afterwards. The written quote is emailed to you after the visit so you can sit with it, or take it to a strata council or an AGM. Nothing gets added once work starts without being quoted to you first.

There is no schedule, it follows the traffic. A quiet ensuite vanity can go years. A lobby floor taking hundreds of people a day, wet boots and luggage carts through a Vancouver winter needs attention far more often. The things to watch for are a dull path forming where everyone walks while the edges still shine, and rings or patches that no longer wipe away. Between visits, a pH neutral cleaner made for natural stone protects the finish you have; anything acidic shortens it.