I found Davan on Yelp and was surprised by all the 5-star reviews (shills?) but gave them a shot anyway - when will I learn? Nobody is that good right? Right, they are not that good, but they charge just as much as everyone else nonetheless.
My countertops look good enough to the casual visitor, but the install is not worth 5 stars. After all, it's the install you're paying for as the material is not that expensive.
Anna was great over the phone and via email. The measurement guy was late but competent, if a little old school. The installers were late as well missing a 2 hour arrival window for a countertop install - not cool.
Note that this is not my first countertop purchase. I have had Solid Surface, Quartz, Granite and even wood countertops in the past. The countertop fabrication from the Davan shop was just okay - not terrible, not great. The front edge of the slab is wavy when viewed from the side. This is usually a sign that they are not using the latest equipment when putting on the edge and polishing or are not great with the buffer. It also showed up with several small chips/pits (largely unavoidable in granite) that should have been filled first before getting to me.
The seam in a long run is not as good as it could be and the face is not properly aligned with the intersecting piece leaving some of the unfinished edge showing because the rounded edge stops too soon. That's on the installers.
Industry standards call for no more than 1/16" wide seams in granite, but most installers hit no more than 1/32". This one exceeds 1/16" in spots. This is not surprising since they did not use a vacuum seam setter to pull the slabs together but just had one guy push from one end (really?). When I questioned them on why they weren't using the proper setter gear they gave me some nonsense story about the cups leaving marks, and needing space for the epoxy - baloney. The seam is not the worst I've seen but could easily have been much better had they just used a machine you can buy for less than $500 to pull the pieces together.
Before I could stop him, the installer used Liquid Nails underneath at the edges in the back!!! Not only will Liquid Nails crack with seasonal movement of the wood cabinets and be useless, it can can stain the granite from below due to being petroleum-based. Since he only put the tiniest of smears in the back corners under the cabinets after the stone was already in place, I am not too concerned. His lack of attention to detail saved him - lol. FYI, some of it has already cracked upon drying proving my point. Honestly, putting a bead of anything in the corner of a set stone countertop is worthless in terms of holding power anyway so why bother? They tried to use standard white latex caulk in the front to fill the inevitable gaps, but I stopped them.
They then attached the very large under mount sink with only 5 lousy clips and a tiny bead of caulk (filled with water it would weigh 285 pounds!). They didn't even bother to caulk the inside gap where water will run off the counter. This was unacceptable but they didn't know how, or didn't want to make it right when I questioned them, so I just resigned myself to putting in more support later and doing a proper caulk job.
They also failed to shim the thin strip of granite at the front of the sink which could lead to failure should someone lean on it too much in the future. I noticed it later when I leaned on it a bit and it flexed! I had to fix that too.
Finally, they tried to attach the dishwasher from the sides by firing a drywall screw into the hardwood cabinet. Yeah, no. I stopped them before they split the wood on my brand new cabinet frames. i drilled pilot holes later and attached it properly.
In 2020 there is no excuse for not learning best practices in a trade. These guys were not rookies, so good enough must be their mantra. Some might say it was an off day, but no, this is clearly how they work as they didn't want to modify their methods when I raised issues. But hey, they were nice.
Thankfully, this is not my dream house or I would have stopped the install early on and been on the phone asking for better installers. It's sad you have to instruct contractors on how to do their jobs, but I guess that's where we are these days.
As it is, the countertop looks just okay - hence 3 stars.
I cannot recommend Davan. read more