Thank you Joyful Noise, bdavis466, Bvacchiano, and Jbrillo.
Thank you Joyful Noise (by the way, I love your screen name!). One company suggested adding quartz to the plaster, but I fear that is going to be a shorter lived finish than the others. Unfortunately, not surprised that I gravitated to the more expensive finishes.
Thank you bdavis466 for your input and for willingly sharing your research with all of us. I saw some of the research you and others have talked about particularly with respect to blue pigments (if I have read correctly I want cobalt pigment) and inorganic versus organic (again if I am reading correctly I want inorganic).
Thank you Bvacchiano for sharing your experience with the Primera Stone in the area. I am glad to hear you are still enjoying it. Again, I would not have even known about Primera Stone and may not have found some of the companies here in the area had it not been for the forums talking about it first.
Thank you Jbrillo. I may call Modern Method tomorrow and see if they ever polish the pebbles. Otherwise, it will likely be a no go. We went on a family vacation two years ago to a place with a small pebble pool (I do not know which surface it technically was) and everyone else complained how they hated the resort pool, claiming it was too rough. Same thing happened when we went to a friend’s recently. When we were headed home, my family commented that I better not get the pool redone (or rebuilt) with pebble.