by Don Benton, Owner, Granite & Marble Solutions
It was an hour before the Atlanta Party at KBIS, an industry mixer in Orlando I hadn’t planned to attend, and I was sitting in a hotel room with my wife wondering if the bar downstairs was a better use of my evening than getting back in a cab.
I’d had a long week. The drive down was worse than expected, travel chaos had wrecked my plans for the trade show, and I was tired. The company had been through a slow few months and I’d been watching travel expenses carefully. Orlando is not my favorite city. The truth is I almost didn’t go to the party at all.
But Brad Hanner had asked me to come, and Brad doesn’t really do “maybe.”
I’ve known Brad for years. He’s the Associate Publisher of Atlanta Homes & Lifestyles, where he’s spent more than 35 years building the magazine into what it is today. We see each other at NKBA and NARI events, and somewhere in the middle of all that, GMS did him a favor on a project at Phipps Plaza. He’s never forgotten it. Brad keeps a long ledger of who showed up for him, and he believes in returning the favor.
When he asked if I was going to the party at KBIS, I tried to politely decline, but he came back twice. He said this was the kind of room where business happens, one of THE major networking events in our industry, and that I’d be making the wrong call if I skipped it. After a few rounds of his quiet insistence, I felt I’d be rude to refuse. So I packed up last minute and drove to Orlando.
Then everything went sideways. The show didn’t happen for me. I arrived weary, one hour before the party started, and I almost stayed at the hotel bar with my wife and called it a night.
I stuck to my word and went.
Brad greeted me at the door, like he does with everyone. And before I’d even ordered my first margarita, he was introducing me to the people behind something he said I “could not refuse.” The 2026 Southeastern Designer Showhouse was adding new elements that year, including a full SPA and Wellness Center, and they needed a porcelain fabricator who could deliver something different. Brad had put my name forward.
Before my first margarita, I was being pitched on the Southeast Designer Showhouse.
The Pause
I’ve been in this situation before. Big platforms come with a lot of pressure and tight timelines, and after our run with HGTV and a couple of other high-visibility events, I made my team a promise: no more solo yeses on things like this. We agree as a group, or we don’t agree at all.
So even though my gut wanted to say yes right there in Orlando, I told Brad I needed a week. I went home and laid it out for my team, for Noah Kimberlain at Encore Stone Studio (who I’ve known and trusted for years), and for the builder, Hask Custom Homes. Could we deliver this without compromising the rest of the business? Did everyone want this?
Within a week, we said yes. Then the real work started.
The Brief
I met Claudia Stimmel for the first time after we’d already accepted the project. Her work tells you a lot about her before you ever meet her. She’s confident, she’s layered, and she’s not afraid to go dark when the room calls for it. As the home’s Specifications Designer, she was the keeper of every material decision in the house, and she’d be approving everything we did before a saw started moving.
I walked into that meeting expecting the standard dynamic. The designer tells us what she wants in detail, and we execute.
She did the opposite of what I expected.
“I want you to present the designs for the countertops,” she said. “Not the room. Just the countertops.”
She had already chosen the materials for each of our four spaces, all porcelain, all from Encore Stone Studio. Her direction beyond that was deliberately broad: give me some integrated sinks, full slab where it makes sense, and please don’t bring me a boring backsplash.
Most designers want to be in every decision. Claudia trusted us to be creative.
That kind of trust doesn’t come along often, and we didn’t want to waste it.
Room by Room
We had four rooms, each with its own constraints and its own feel.
The In-Law Suite, in Glem White Porcelain. The geometry largely dictated the design here. Floor-to-ceiling slab in the shower, a clean vanity, a kitchenette countertop. The win in this space was execution. Big sheets of porcelain don’t forgive mistakes, and every seam matters.
The Wellness Center, in Liem Black Porcelain. Claudia called this space “Simplicity a Southern Lifestyle with Modern Gym Design,” and the dark, dramatic palette set the tone. The shower geometry was fixed, with slab walls and the ceiling, which is its own kind of technical achievement. But the vanity backsplash had room to breathe. I designed that one myself, a piece with a French silhouette and a masculine edge. Tene and Antonio talked me out of about three bad ideas before we landed on something that was both balanced and buildable.
The Pool Bath, in Aria White Porcelain. Floating vanities are one of our favorite things to build. Our first concept put a vessel sink on top of the vanity with a floating shelf below. Claudia kept the shelf. The vessel sink came off when her wall tile design ended up covering the entire wall. The shelf alone did more for the space than the sink would have.
The Art Deco Powder Room, in Calacatta Antico Porcelain. This was the struggle, and eventually the breakthrough.
Powder rooms are where we take chances. They’re small, self-contained, and they reward designers and fabricators who don’t play it safe. We knew that going in.
Our first concept was a waterfall edge, but it felt too obvious. We pivoted to a floating vanity to mirror the floating cabinet the room already had. Better, but the standard scalloped backsplash that everyone does on a piece like this felt boring. Done before. The room deserved better.
We were stuck, and then Tene said something that changed everything.
The Breakthrough
“Stop thinking in two dimensions,” Tene said. “The material is twelve millimeters thick. Add another layer, slightly smaller, mimicking the first. Focus on the vein flow. You bring a whole new element to the design.”
I knew right away she was onto something.
That’s the design we built. When I sat down with Claudia to walk her through everything we’d come up with for the four rooms, I saved the powder room for last, almost as an afterthought. The other rooms had landed beautifully and she’d approved them with only minor tweaks, so I figured the powder room would be a small finishing note.
I showed her the layered backsplash, and she lit up.
Finally, a fabricator that is willing to get creative with me! — Claudia Stimmel
Her only ask was a third layer. She was right, so we added it.
One more thing about the powder room, because credit matters. When I showed Claudia the design, she assumed I’d come up with it. I’d designed the Wellness Center backsplash and she made a reasonable leap. I didn’t correct her in the moment because I didn’t want to interrupt her excitement. But that design idea was Tene’s. The team knew right away. I’m putting it in print now so everyone else does, too.
The Happy Accident
Three days before the showhouse opened, the room evolved on us.
The original plan had tile running across the wall behind the vanity. Claudia’s vision was a tiled envelope around the floating piece. Without going into the details, the room needed a different solution and we needed to find it fast.
Our answer was to fabricate an oversized porcelain backsplash panel. It was bigger than the original spec, with rounded corners, wide enough on each side to take up real wall space, and tall enough to reach down toward the floor. We had no time, no model, no fancy version of this in mind. We were just trying to make the room finish well for opening night.
We thought it might look like a giant bandaid.
It didn’t. It looked like it had always been the plan. We had no time to fuss over vein flow on the panel because the slab was cut to size fast, and we got lucky in a way you can’t plan. A vein landed on the right side of the panel that looks completely intentional. Claudia called it one of those happy accidents where the constraint made the room better.
We thought it would look like a giant bandaid. It became the best thing we did.
I keep coming back to that powder room, and so does everyone else. It was the conversation piece for the whole showhouse run. One of our existing clients called me as soon as she walked out of the showhouse, still in the car with her designer. She’d loved everything we’d done across the four rooms, but the Art Deco Powder Room was the piece she couldn’t stop talking about. By the time she hung up, she wanted to rethink her own project and bring more of that creative energy into her backsplashes. That call alone was worth the whole month.
The Four Spaces
The Wellness Center
Liem Black Porcelain · Designed by Claudia Stimmel
The Art Deco Powder Room
Calacatta Antico Porcelain · Designed by Renee Chiarelli (The Design Editors)
The In-Law Suite
Glem White Porcelain · Designed by UpCountry Home
The Pool Bath
Aria White Porcelain · Designed by Claudia Stimmel
The Cast
This project doesn’t happen without a lot of people. I want to name them.
- Atlanta Homes & Lifestyles (@atlantahomesmag), the host magazine and the institution behind 11 years of this event
- Brad Hanner, Associate Publisher, the man who got me to the party, and the reason this entire chapter happened
- Linda MacArthur Architect (@lmarchitect), architect of the 13,000-square-foot home
- Hask Custom Homes (@haskcustomhomes), builder
- Claudia Stimmel / Simplicity a Southern Lifestyle (@claudiastimmel), Specifications Designer and designer of the Wellness Center and Pool Bath
- Renee Chiarelli / The Design Editors (@renee_chiarelli), designer of the Art Deco Powder Room
- UpCountry Home (@upcountryhome), designer of the In-Law Suite
- Encore Stone Studio (@encorestonestudio), material partner for all four porcelains. Noah Kimberlain and his team made this collaboration possible from day one.
- Solidarity Sandy Springs, the food pantry and community organization the entire event benefits. They feed 750+ Sandy Springs families weekly. Worth a visit, and worth a donation if you can.
What I’ll Carry Forward
A few things stuck with me from this project. The favor I did at Phipps Plaza years ago is what opened this door. Brad showed up for me because I’d shown up for him, and that’s how relationships in this industry actually work. The promise I’d made my team about no solo yeses on big commitments turned out to be the thing that made everything else possible. The trust they gave me when I came home with the pitch was the same trust Claudia later gave us in that first meeting, and the work got better because of it. The piece I’m proudest of came from a moment where we had no time and no plan. None of that is how you’d plan a project on purpose, but it’s worth remembering the next time the constraints show up.
We’re doing it again next month. The Burton Showhouse at Lake Burton opens June 4 and runs through June 14, hosted again by Atlanta Homes & Lifestyles. This one is a McKinney Builders home with Lew Oliver as architect, and the proceeds benefit the Wildcat Volunteer Fire Department and the Lake Burton Civic Association. Different scale, different setting, and the same standard for the work.
If you’ve got a project where you want real creative collaboration with your stone fabricator, I’d love to talk.
I could not be any prouder about a piece, and my team, for that little powder room.
— Don
