Getting Stoned

The stone masons have been at the house for a couple of weeks putting the stone facade on the front of the house.  We decided to use cultured stone, man made, rather than real stone, found in nature, for several reasons.  It is much more cost effective, it goes up faster and it is difficult to tell it from the real thing.

 The above picture is of some of the individual stones before they have been put on the house.  The bottoms of these stones are flat and adhere to the house very uniformly. The stones for the corners of the house are formed at a right angle at one end so they wrap around and look natural.  Double click on the above picture to see how natural these stones look.

The firs step is to nail wire mesh to the side of the house.  It looks like the same kind of wire mesh that is used to plaster a wall.

When the mesh is up mortar is troweled on to create a flat surface.  These gentlemen, Tom and Rick, (not me and my son-in-law) are in the process of covering the mesh with mortar.

When the wall is dry or almost dry, the stones are placed on the wall by putting mortar on the back of the stone like a bricklayer would do on the bottom and sides of a brick. Then, the stone is pressed on to the wall and it just stays there.  Later, after the mortar behind the stone has dried, they come back and fill in between the stones with more mortar.  They use a tapered canvas bag (like a baker uses to decorate a cake) filled with mortar and they squeeze it between the stones.  A small trowel is then used to smooth out the mortar.

Here is one section of the front about 3/4 completed.  The stone is shipped in the pallet sized boxes in the foreground.