hi. granite would be much better than quartz to use for your hearth. quartz doesn't like a great deal of heat.a polished surface to the hearth makes cleaning alot easier, but if you got a flame textured or dolly pointed slab; it would work better with your rusic stone finish. have you considered having the base made from the same material as the breast. if so, make sure you have the minimum required projection infront of the fire to meet the regs. And lastly, look at the hearth temp of the appliance- do you need the inner hearth cut for expansion?good luck with your burning

adie.k -- Thank you for your reply and encouragement to consider granite. We have been looking into it and selected a fairly dark 'honed'/ antiqued finish granite that will work well with our style of fireplace stone. It'll be nice to not worry about the hearth getting chipped from rough fireplace use. thx

You might look into soap stone also, if it fits your decor. My brother had his done in granite tiles, which are less expensive than slab granite. Visit a good large stone yard/warehouse and see what types of stone they recommend. Is honed marble or marble tiles to your liking? Black marble can be nice, and there are dark greens, etc., also. I was amazed at the stones I was unaware of when I was visiting granite and stone yards for my kitchen.

Sorry I just reread your post and saw that you don't want tiles. I do remember seeing some honed stones, including limestone, that might interest you. Again, a stone yard or design center is a great place to get info. Don't know if one is available around you, sometimes a contractor can refer you if you are using one, but if you can get in contact directly with a local stone fabricator, you can usually pick from remnants they have in small pieces left over from larger jobs that did not use an entire slab of stone, at a greatly reduced price. The trick is finding and getting to talk to the fabricator directly. I was able to do that when I was ordering my kitchen counter.