Its a natural material, you want "perfect" you get quartz. These inclusions are to be expected.

As @millworkman posted, marble is a natural stone and will have variations and inclusions.

When I selected my marble I went to the stone yard to look at the actual slabs. Even the same type of marble would have multiple "bundles" of slabs that were together as these "bundles" represented marble that came from the same source - e.g. the equivalent of being the same lot.

I looked at "bundles" of Calacatta and Carrarra but ultimately went with French Vanilla because I didn't want an extremely "marbled" look for the master bathroom.

Even within those bundles the slabs would have subtle variations. There were a few French Vanilla bundles with six or so slabs and I looked at the various slabs. When I had winnowed down my choices to two or three the workman would have the slab taken out so that I could closely inspect the entire slab.

Once I selected the actual slab that I found the most aesthetic, it was tagged with my name and the fabricator picked up that specific slab I had paid for.

We are pretty accepting of the slab actually. My wife is mostly curious if this mark is a natural variation or a sign of poorly handled material.

Nothing to do with poor handling. More to do with Mother Nature having a wicked sense of humor and being prone to puncturing the pomposity of the idea of ”perfect”. She loves pranking with inclusions of all kinds in stone. Because thats’s natural stone. You love it *because* of that, not in spite of it. or you get a plastic rock. Which will have resin pooling and inclusions too.

Thanks Joseph,

That was exactly the message I needed to get my wife to stop fussing and allowed me to move on with my day

You mention you do not have experience with marble. Your wife does realize marble etches from acids such as lemon juice, tomato products etc?

Looks like natural variation to me too. Very beautiful stone. But I am not sure it‘s right for you. If your wife is concerned with that small and natural variation, she will be really upset at etches. Marble will etch. That is the nature of marble. People who love marble don’t mind. But it could be that your wife will.

Oh we have marble experience, we just don't have experience picking out slabs. We realize marble being natural will have imperfections, but there is a difference between buying a slab like that and a slab with a wine stain.

Did you try cleaning that area of the slab? Some of the slabs at stone yards can be quite dirty and that "discoloration" might have just washed off. What was more noticeable to me, was the big color difference between the top half of the slab and the bottom half. That slab won't look so pretty when used on a large island.

Have the slab sealed, and it won’t stain. It will still etch, but eventually the etches will blend togather. And really, the etches will only be visible when the light hits it a ”certain” way. The etching is called patina. Nobody fusses over patina in Europe. Embrace the living surface! Real marble is gorgeous, and implores you to touch it…whereas the manmade, plastic-y quartz is not, and does not.

Hi all, I am the wife. We have read a lot about marble prior to making our decision. We even got a marble sample and left different food substances on the surface for different periods of time to see what it will do to the stone. So, we do understand that it is a soft natural stone that will come with variations (and that's a beauty of it) and that will etch, scratch, chip and stain. We are willing to accept all of that because we really do love natural stone. We are mostly just wondering if the light brown discoloration was improper treatment of the stone since it does stand out when you look at it in person. As much as I am willing to accept all the staining that my marble will get, I would not want to buy a slab at a full price that already had a tomato stain :)

Thank you all so much for your quick feedback!!

@chispa we tried wiping it off but it didn't help. You are right about the color difference. We actually have 2 more slabs that we will be using. One of the other two slabs will probably be used for the island. Overall, we are pretty excited to have this beautiful stone installed!

Slab 2:

• If it really bugs you, then choose another slab. Or, if you don’t need to use the entire slab, you and the fabricator can plan the template, by avoiding that spot.
• That’s what we did with our soapstone. There were sections we preferred over others. In the slab yard at M. Teixeira, we indicated which sections of the stone we preferred, and where in the kitchen each section would go. It was all marked out with masking tape.

Just make sure you are on site at the yard, when templating is done. And, take pictures. This way there will be no doubt as to what was agreed to. Oh, and of course, have a floorplan, and measurements with you!

I thought I was getting used to posters complaining about the performance of their marble countertops. Now they're complaining before a blade ever kisses a slab. I give up.

Joseph, I think we have all seen the images of brown stains (oxidized iron deposits) in installed marble countertops/tile that occur after prolonged water exposure. We don't have experience with viewing uninstalled marble slabs and wanted to know if this is a common occurrence in raw material. We were simply asking for help to determine what this discoloration was and if it occurs naturally or due to improper storage.

“Now they're complaining before a blade ever kisses a slab. I give up.”

@Joseph Corlett, LLC - posters here often get criticized for not looking at a counter slab in advance, for not asking the fabricator questions in advance, and for being ignorant about stone fabrication in general. People on this forum have blamed the homeowner like it‘s the homeowner’s fault for not knowing what they don’t know. But here is a homeowner asking questions—good questions—and here you are giving them attitude for that as well.

Kat:

Fred Houston has written articles about how an installed marble floor was destroyed by rust because the homeowner was too cheap to keep the air conditioning on. There is no way to tell what's inside this stuff and how it may or may not behave.

On a related note, this site is replete with horror stories of contaminated quartzites. One thing upon which you can depend is the natural stone industry's ability to peddle stones marginally suitable for use as countertops with impunity.

Like the girl in love with the bad boy at the bar with no job and an arrearage in his child support payments, don't think your love of marble can change him please. Be grateful he showed himself before you made it to the altar.

Just wanted to give everyone an update. We learned that the slab was exposed to the rain and came in wet with dirt on it.