Fickle Food

I will warn you ahead of time, stonework is not for sissies. It’s hard work. You’ll probably want to wear leather gloves as stonework is hell on the manicure.

The first picture shows the ugly concrete and concrete blocks that made up the walls of our homes foundation and patio, before we affixed stone to them in a kind of “veneering”, for lack of a better term. We purchased about a truckload of thin pieces of stone, the pieces we chose were too thin to even work as path stones. They came out to be about 6 cents a pound. Next we cleaned the concrete blocks with a high powered pressure hose and left it to dry. To apply the stone, we mixed up a batch of mortar then troweled it onto a smallish area at the base of the wall, kind of like icing a cake, then firmly pressed the first stone onto the wall and tapped it lightly with a rubber mallet. The thickness of the mortar varied with the thickness of each stone, it generally worked out to about a half inch or more thick.

We chose each stone according to its color and shape, fitting the pieces like a jigsaw puzzle, working bottom to top in small areas so the mortar didn’t dry before the stones were placed and adding more mortar as we needed it. We used a hammer and chisel to break up pieces that were too large. After the mortar had hardened we filled in the spaces between with stones with mortar, taking care to clean the excess off the face of the stone. When the entire wall was covered with stone and the gaps were filled and dried, we capped off the top with much larger, thicker pieces of stone using the same technique.

I think it looks GREAT! Especially with flowers hanging down over them. Next spring we’re going to do the floors of the patio. Hubby can hardly wait.