A shower base without grout
A tiled shower floor is a grid of small pieces with grout between them, and the floor of a shower is where that grid works hardest: it is wet longest, it holds the fall to the drain, and every joint in it is a line that has to stay sealed.
A base cut from solid stone removes the grid entirely. The fall is machined into the stone, the surface is continuous from wall to drain, and the only joints in the whole floor are where it meets the walls. That is the argument for the format, and it is a practical one, not an aesthetic one.
The honed finish
Every base here is honed, and several are honed and filled. None is polished, which is unusual for stone we sell and is a decision, not an omission.
A honed surface keeps its texture, and texture is what a wet floor underfoot needs. That is why these are supplied honed and honed and filled, even though the same stones are polished for almost every other application we sell them for.
Stone shower base materials
The range covers marble, travertine, basalt and a marble and basalt combination. Each behaves differently and the choice is not only about color.
The marbles and travertines are carbonate stones, so the chemistry the marble and travertine pages set out applies to them: acids matter and sealing is part of owning one. Basalt is a volcanic silicate and does not react the same way, which is one of the reasons dark basalt turns up in wet rooms.
Shower base dimensions
These are finished objects at set sizes: square trays, a wider rectangle and a long narrow one, in thicknesses of two to four inches, with every dimension published against each piece. The enclosure is built around the base, not the base being made to the enclosure.
That is why the dimensions matter more here than the stone does at the first pass. A base has to suit the opening, the door and the drain position, and the shortlist is whatever survives those three constraints. The thickness matters too, since it feeds into how far the tray ends up above the surrounding floor, along with how it is set and what is under it.
Filled travertine
Some of these are honed and filled, which matters more on a shower floor than anywhere else travertine is used. Travertine forms with voids running through it, and a filled surface closes them so the floor is continuous.
The beige slab page covers what filled and unfilled mean across the travertine range. Filling and honing are doing two different jobs here: the filling closes the voids so the surface is continuous, and the honing keeps the texture that a wet floor wants.
Fitting a stone base
A stone base is heavy, it arrives finished, and it sets the levels of everything around it, so it is fitted early, not late. The drain position, the fall and the waterproofing detail where the tray meets the walls are the points that decide whether the installation works.
Those are questions for whoever is building the shower, and the base's own documentation carries the dimensions they will work from. The shower niches and benches range covers the waterproofing components that go in around it.
