Creme of Marfil Mable

Crema of maril marble, is probably one of the most sold natural marble in the World. For those who may not be familiar with it, it has a light beige colour and normally some veins that combine perfectly with the stone. Today I’m dedicating this post to creme of marfil marble. Yes, natural marble, and creme marfil or crema marfil. A few years back a close friend bought creme marfil marble tiles 40 cm x 40 cm for his home. At the time, we had spoken about engineered marble, but he and his wife had the natural stone choice in their mind, and went ahead with the installation. I was invited to the home inauguration party, and it was a really good combination, and the floor looked fine back then regarding: shine, finish, edges, instalment, etc.  Well, a few weeks ago, my friend called me and asked for my opinion, after 6 years of living in the home and using it with some care and maintenance, I went to his home and quickly noticed a few things that had happened, namely:

1.  Big chips of pure stone just jumped out of place 
2. The resin from the veins has changed color, probably due to UV exposure, noticing a horrible effect on the tile
3.  Some veins have become small craters as the softer stone has disapeared
4. The shade of the stone has become uneven, due to some humidity that came in from the ground

The creme of marfil marble is a really beautiful natural stone, and in this specific case it has currently several problems, some easy to solve, but others a bit more costly.
To be honest with you, every product has pros and cons, in this case unfortunately due to several factors, problems arose, with the humidity that he has coming in through the ground underneath the floor, I figure he would probably have bigger problems if he installed other products that are less porous than this stone, like engineered quartz or even porcelain tiles.
It's not my intention to reveal specific problems with creme marfil marble, it's more to say, choose wisely the product you intend to install. Make sure you follow all the manufacturers requirements to avoid installation problems. Everyone does mistakes and  the decision to install a product should be taken seriously, and other aspects besides colour should be carefully evaluated.
Sometimes the information available regarding a specific product may be hard to find, in the engineered stone business fortunately it's standard procedure by most manufacturers to have installation, maintenance and care guides. A few years ago, the natural stone business lacked of documentation and certification. Today things have changed, and also natural stones have CE standards to obied. So when buying or installing make sure your creme of marfil marble or any other natural stone has a CE certificate.
 

Nature by Compac Quartz finally revealed

Well the big kept secret that not even the personnel at the factory had noticed, and that they’ve been working hard in the last few months to complete and improve for the market debute was the Nature Series.

I try to avoid publicity stunts although this one was really something I enjoyed, as it has some interesting technical work behind it. First the colors which have been chosen for the launch of this new series have natural marble names and are basically imitating the finest marble colors.

Perlino, Negro Portoro, Pierre Bleue, Bianco Carrara, Botticino, Noce, Imperial

So the nature series is said officially to be made with Bio-Resin, being a nature friendly product which associates natural colors of natural stone with the best that engineered stone has to offer, and with an environmental background.

Technically they say that this new product is more resistant to heat, impact, food natural acids, UV rays, to cut, to erosion, less contraction and less porous. Sounds like a super product which little information is given so far about it, the sales rep part sounds like a Engineered Quartz 2.0 product, however I will continue to gather information to confirm the little public information that at the moment the market has been given.

And to top off this cake with a cherry, they are offering in some markets a coffee machine with your kitchen top, actually marketing is getting a bit out of hand in this engineered stone business.

Anyhow back to what is important, I did get a chance to check this material out, the polish looked fine, the fine grain, surely will need more resin than the other Compac Quartz products, unfortunately no technical data available to confirm this. And the type of Bio-Resin is also something I’m going to be looking into. Actually I’ve already started to investigate how bio it really is?

I really am waiting to see how fabricators are going to deal with this product, if it is more durable than the other series, they’ll surely have more problems with this one. I await feed-back from my reader on this one, on my end I will continue to investigate.

I know that they’ve have been working very hard and with great secrecy on this nature project, sincerely I was expecting something more …. They speak of quartz, I have serious doubts that the fine grain materials really have high percentages of quartz … I will wait for the official technical information, the website has most of the commercial information, surely the next few weeks will help me fill in the blanks.