Buying marble for the floors.

We live about an hour from Kishangarh which is a huge marble producing area, for years i have drieven through there wondering at all the colours and just the sheer quantity of marble on display....well yesterday we actaully went there, looked at rather a lot of it and bought marble for our floors.
Personaaly I think white marble a bit on the booring side, and difficult to keep clean but I know that was one thing Praveen really wanted for our home...so what the heck, we will hire someone to clean the floors and dust anyway- let's go for it!

Usual story I  Have to hide in the car to start- he goes and starts negotiations and gets a base type price, then I can be revealed...truly prices will be 50, 100 even 200% higher if people realise he has a whitie for a partner. One guy when hassled once even said- look at her you can afford to pay more... weird attitude.

Loved this brown stone- looked like flying over the Austrlain Outback...but what was I thinking We were after white marble....

OK...millions of stacks of white marble later- each pile is one cube of marble that has been sliced and numbered, so when layed out the colours and patterns through it relate to each other...

Tonnes of stone, cut up like cheese and more accurate than I can cut cheese!

And larger than usual crowds of assistants because word got around a whitie was here lets go and peak...

it must me horrible to be a celebrity- people staring like you are an animal in a cage- "Oh look they can walk": "Oh look they drink chai, just like me" " oh stare at their skin, their eyes, their clothes"

Weird!!

see the guy with the bucket- he is important to the proceedings- throws water [with a flourish, of course ] over the stone so you see what it will be like when polished.

Up and down we worked one stretch of raod, looking, leaving our phone numbers so we ended up with a bit of a bidding war, different guys trying to get our attention.Our marble is white with a subtle pattern through it, with a little grey and straces of terracotta red, once decided on each piece has to be measured and stacked on the truck- you always eyeball each step of the process- don't leave anything to trust...then onto to choose borders and other fancy bits...

lots of amazing borders, would have been happy to have a patch work quilt effect of them on our floor, but that would have done everyone local's head in trying to understand that and been the death of me trying to explain it....picked up the red traces in our marble with a terracotta red border and these lovely rangolis for inserts

All electrical was completed yesterday, glass in going in the windows today, plumber finishes tomorrow and 2 weeks for the floor and we will be in the place!!!

We are there each day planting the garden and encouraging- can't wait!!