Stone, Skill, and Instinct: Meet Dallas Fabricator Delia Larralde

How a veteran fabricator earned the trust of builders, designers — and our own Candy Evans.

Beautiful stone doesn’t become beautiful design on its own. It takes a fabricator with judgment and instinct — and in Dallas, Delia Larralde has become one of the most trusted.

She discovered the craft young, after her family moved from Los Angeles to Torreón, Mexico. A job at a marble company in her early 20s was supposed to be temporary; instead, it set the direction for her career.

Larralde fell in love with the process. First with fabrication, then with the raw, unpredictable beauty of stone pulled from the mountains. Back then, dynamite — not diamond wire — was still used to break boulders loose, and selecting good material required true instinct.

“You had to have a really good eye,” she said. “Because of the dynamite, a lot of stone came down with fractures. One bad choice and the entire boulder was no good.”

From Mexico to Dallas — the Turning Point

After moving to Dallas in the mid-90s, Larralde reinvented herself once more. She started selling handcrafted marble sinks online from her garage. Serendipitously, as that business ran its course, a friend from Mexico who had opened a granite fabrication shop reached out for help.

“I didn’t know anything about granite,” she said. “Travertine and marble, yes — but granite was a different world.”

She spent a year in the shop with his crew, gaining a working grasp of the tools, the cuts, and the realities of fabrication. When he retired and sold the company, Larralde set out on her own, renting the space she still occupies today and establishing her shop the same way she learned the craft: by doing it.

Her son Carlos joined soon after, working his way from the lowest-level tasks into the production role he now leads. His attention to detail — “our secret weapon,” Delia calls it — is central to how their company, Magick Marble & Granite, operates.

First the Stone, Then the Fabricator

Most people meet Larralde after choosing their slabs. After CandysDirt.com publisher Candy Evans found hers at Texas Counter Fitters — “they have the most incredible selection” — she needed a fabricator with the expertise to execute them. The introduction came from her builder, Mills Custom Homes.

“The minute I met Delia, I knew she understood stone the way an editor understands a sentence,” Candy said. “Slabs from Texas Counter Fitters are jewels. Every vein, every crystal matters. Delia wasn’t selling me a service. She was protecting me from mistakes I didn’t even know I could make.”

Evans says Delia conginued to work with her throughout the fabrication process, even after the slabs were installed.

“I am very sensitive to bruising, and Delia had her team round out every corner edge,” says Evans. “We are now looking at making table tops for my “downsized” tables in our new home.

The Work Homeowners Never See

Once a slab leaves the yard, the real work begins.

“People think it’s simple — buy the slab, cut it, install it,” Larralde said. “They don’t see the hours of polishing, the detailing, the fragile stones that can fall apart on us.”

Even seemingly flawless slabs can surprise her.

“You never know what you’re going to find,” she said. “You think a slab is perfect, and then you’re fabricating it and there’s a little hairline or something happens. That’s the stressful part — anything that happens before installation is on us.”

A Philosophy Built on Patience and Precision

Once the technical dust settles, Larralde’s attention shifts to the part of the experience homeowners feel most: reassurance, clarity, and calm. “My job is to make this part easy. You want them to move into their home with joy, not regrets,” she said.

More than two decades in, she still approaches every project with the same instinct and patience that first pulled her into the quarries. “Stone can be unpredictable,” she said. “But when you understand it, really understand it, you can make something extraordinary.”