The rock guy at the garden center changed my whole plan

I was at my local nursery in Austin last Saturday picking out some flagstone for a patio I'm doing. An older guy stocking gravel nearby said "you're gonna hate yourself in two years with that kind of limestone, it chips like crazy." He pointed me to a local bluestone instead, same price but way harder wearing. Has anyone else had a random stranger at a supply yard save them from a bad material choice?

2 comments

2 Comments

daniel1404h ago

Hang on, I actually gotta push back on this a little. I get that @lilyp37 and everyone loves the rock guy advice, but I've been burned more than once by listening to some random employee's "expert opinion." Last year at a stone yard in Dallas, a guy told me the same thing about flagstone - said this local sandstone was junk and pushed me toward some expensive quartzite. Turns out his "expertise" was just what he heard from his buddy who sold that quartzite. The sandstone was actually perfect for what I needed and half the price. These guys mean well but they're not engineers or geologists, they're just dudes who've been shoveling rocks for twenty years and might have their own weird biases.

lilyp3716h ago

Ngl the rock guys at supply yards are always the real MVPs. They've seen everything weather and fail over the years so their advice is pure gold. That limestone tip alone probably saved you a ton of headache and money down the road. I always ask the oldest employee I can find at those places before buying anything. Their short cuts like that are worth way more than the price of the stone.