Choosing Countertops for Your Hill Country Home: Granite, Quartz and Quartzite with Schumann Granite

If you build a custom home around Fredericksburg, there’s a good chance your countertops come out of Ransom Rust’s shop. Ransom owns Schumann Granite with his wife, Ashley. In Episode 14 he talked with Steven Butcher and Ryan Rendon about how an accountant ended up running a stone fabrication business, and about the countertop questions homeowners get wrong.

From accounting to stone

Ransom was born on a 35,000-acre family ranch near Del Rio, grew up partly in Dalhart in the Panhandle, and has called Fredericksburg home since his family moved back after he finished high school. He earned a master’s in accounting at Texas State, worked in public accounting in downtown Houston, then moved to Dripping Springs to do accounting for a commercial real estate firm in Austin.

Sitting in an office eight hours a day didn’t suit him. His stepdad, Chris Kaiser, ran a custom home business in Fredericksburg, and Ransom had worked summers on his jobs through high school and college. The fabricator on those jobs was Matthew Schumann, who founded Schumann Granite. When Matthew mentioned he was thinking about selling and retiring, Ransom bought the company in 2021.

What Schumann Granite does

The shop fabricates and installs countertops, shower walls and other solid surfaces. Ransom says new construction is about 90 percent of the business: kitchens, bathrooms, laundry rooms and pantries. The clock starts the moment the cabinets go in, because builders want their tops right away.

Templating, fabrication and installation are all in-house. Ransom handles shop operations and the CAD programming for their CNC machine, and he goes out with the template guy on complicated jobs, because a mistake in stone is expensive.

“It’s not a 2×4 that you just pick another one up and fix it. It’s a costly mistake sometimes.”Ransom Rust, 30:29

Ashley runs sales and purchasing. Ryan, who has worked with them on a job, said she “knocked it out of the park” in his first selections meeting, and Ransom thinks she should be the face of the company.

Granite, quartz, quartzite, porcelain: what’s the difference?

The biggest source of confusion, Ransom says, is the names. Designers often call everything marble, and plenty of people call everything granite. When Schumann Granite got its name, granite was in about 90 percent of houses and engineered quartz barely existed. Now homeowners are choosing among:

• Granite and marble, the natural stones people know.
• Quartzite, a natural stone, often confused with quartz.
• Quartz, an engineered, man-made stone.
• Porcelain, which is trendy right now.
• Dekton, a compacted mix of porcelain, glass and resin.

At the top of the price range are translucent quartzites that some owners backlight. Steven said he’s a big fan of Taj Mahal but likes Ivory Taj when the stone runs from the base cabinets up the wall, because its veining is more uniform and easier to match.

Two countertop mistakes to avoid

Not picking your own slab. Natural stone varies a lot from slab to slab, so a sample on the wall or a photo can look nothing like what shows up in your kitchen. Schumann Granite tells every natural stone customer to go to the slab yard and pick their own.

“We tell everyone if you’re picking natural stone, then you should probably go to a slab yard and pick your own slabs. It’s going to benefit you.”Ransom Rust, 36:30

Designing an island bigger than a slab. The average slab is about 10 feet, or 120 inches, long. Design a 140 or 150 inch island and you’ll have a seam. If you’re only a few inches over, shrinking the cabinets slightly gets you a seamless top. Steven said he now keeps a note of slab sizes on his desk when he draws islands, and only goes bigger when the client decides the seam is worth it.

Why the trades matter to him

Ransom says he learned more in his first year on the job than in six or seven years of school, and he’s now firmly “on the trade school train.” He pointed out that the average plumber is around 60, and the trades need young people.

He’s involved with the Casa Uber Alles program at Fredericksburg High School, where the trades help students build a custom tiny home from the ground up each year. The house is auctioned, and the money funds scholarships for students going into trades programs. Steven’s partner, Hunter, served as project manager this year, and Butcher Behrens supplied the cabinets.

Schumann Granite also gives 1 percent of its sales each year to youth and the community, including buying at the Gillespie County Livestock Show. Ransom serves on the finance council at St. Mary’s and on the board of the Hill Country Builders Association, and he trains a handful of middle school athletes at his own gym.

Fredericksburg, from someone who came back

Ransom calls the Hill Country “the best part of Texas” and says he can’t go anywhere in Fredericksburg now without seeing someone he knows. His go-to spots are Warner’s Warehouse for lunch, Halter Ranch winery, and the Hill Country Herb Garden, which he calls the town’s best-kept secret from tourists.

His advice for newcomers: you may find out you have allergies once you get here, and people will wave at you on the road. Ryan, who helps a lot of out-of-state buyers move to the area, said the friendliness is the first thing they notice.