# cultured stone fireplace



## Red 5 (Aug 25, 2007)

I once had a client call to come look at her fireplace because she said the stone was falling of the wall. I went to look at the fireplace and discovered that the drystack stone was falling off the wall above the fireplace opening. The stone face was glued onto the drywall. When the owner started the fireplace, the area directly above the opening got so hot that the glue holding the stone heated upand got soft. The weight of the stone caused it to start sliding down the wall. I recommended tearing it all off and redoing it the correct way with lathe and mortar. The owners reluctantly agreed to redo the fireplace the correct way. They asked if we could reuse the stone. I told them that we could not because of the glue on the back of the stone. She then told me that the builder left some extra stone in the basement. When we went down to get the stone we found 2 partial boxes of stone. But the biggest find was several new and used tubes of drywall adhesive. I think this is what they might have used to glue the stone to the wall.


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## jomama (Oct 25, 2008)

This thread reminds me of a situation some carpenter friends asked me about a few years ago. They said they were on a job where a "mason" was having a hard time getting the stone to stick to the drywall with a HOT GLUE GUN!! Suprisingly, the stone kept falling off the wall and sliding around. :whistling

Apparently, the guys had a 5 gallon bucket of hot glue sticks.........................


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## Rockmonster (Nov 15, 2007)

Threads like this discourage me........to think that 3,000+ years ago men were building Machu Picchu, Giza, Stonehenge, and the like. And now in 2010 we're discussing gluing fake stones to painted surfaces, probably on a zero clearance fireplace.....sorry, no input on your problem/solution.....It just has me thinking we need a masonry sub-category for man-made materials and thin stone/brick applications....


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## bytor (Jan 23, 2010)

Rockmonster said:


> It just has me thinking we need a masonry sub-category for man-made materials and thin stone/brick applications....


Hear Hear!

Okay, I admit it: I'm a natural stone snob.
I'm sure there's a 12 step program for me out there somewhere...


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## dbrons (Apr 12, 2010)

> Okay, I admit it: I'm a natural stone snob.


 Yeah, me too. But, since everything is built out here with reinforced walls, we do a lot of thin veneer natural stone. 

The thing is though, there are some of us out here who have built real stone walls before. I always try to make a veneer look like it's a stone wall, not a block with stone stuck on it. 

There's lots of guys out here who never saw an old stone wall, never saw a dairy farm with stone walls lining the fields. It's a different sensibility you bring to it and the differences are, to me, really noticible. 

It's funny, these guys will take a rectangular piece of stone and stick it verticaly or even diagonally on the wall. I say "what kind of stone mason would ever lay a stone that way?" I told my assistant to imagine it were a full sized stone and you dropped in on the ground. How it would land, *that's* the way it would be laid in a wall.

Dave


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## Tscarborough (Feb 25, 2006)

That is the difference, and why I always tell clients not to use tile or stucco guys to apply adhered veneer. Technically they have the skill set to do it competently, but they do not have an understanding of how it is supposed to look so as to imitate the type of masonry being portrayed.

As an FYI, I fought against adhered veneer for almost 10 years, flat out refusing to recommend or even sell it. I have finally accepted that it is a viable product, but only within the narrow limitations of it's practical use:

1) Areas that can not support dimensional masonry, like above a roof line.

2) Interior use over stud framing.

3) Remodeling applications.

4) Where the cost of the desired real stone is prohibitive, mostly due to freight costs.

I get requests for budget costs all the time, and unless one of the above applies, I strongly recommend dimensional stone.


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## Bud Cline (Feb 12, 2006)

> ...I always tell clients not to use tile or stucco guys to apply adhered veneer. Technically they have the skill set to do it competently, but they do not have an understanding of how it is supposed to look...


Careful there kemosabe........:sad: 
That's a mighty broad brush you are painting all of us with.:bangin:


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## dbrons (Apr 12, 2010)

Well, sorry Bud, but out here in California at least, it's a brush I would use too.

Of course I wouldn't recommend you hire me to tile a bathroom either. 

Dave


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## Tscarborough (Feb 25, 2006)

Sorry, Bud, but that has been my experience. I have even been called out to a project where the tile guy tried to grout the stone by smearing mud over the entire surface. That was a tear out and redo.

There are plenty "stone masons" who have no clue either, but the chances of an actual real mason getting it right are magnitudes better than either tile or stucco contractors.

It may be phony stone, but done right there is no way to tell without sectioning the wall.


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## Bud Cline (Feb 12, 2006)

> There are plenty "stone masons" who have no clue either, but the chances of an actual real mason getting it right are magnitudes better than either tile or stucco contractors.


The truth is I couldn't agree more.

In this part of the country rock (stone) is basically unheard of. The problem here is stone is just too far away in most cases and end users won't pay for the transportation thereof.

In Texas stone was king. We did a helluva lot of fire places and retaining walls that were nothing less than fantastic. We would dump a trailer load in the street and go from there. I came here about nineteen years ago and haven't seen a frigging' rock since I got here.

Plenty of cultured stuff tho and it's all done by the south of the border techs. Don't ever let anybody tell you those guys understand stone because they don't.

The jobs they do that I love the most are the ones (fireplaces) where [somebody] won't spend the money to buy the corner pieces and everything is done with flats, even the outside corners and firebox returns. Lock-stack and structural appearance are concepts that escape them all. It is truly pitiful!

Three years ago I tiled the interior of a home that was a total exterior faux stone done by "the stone guys". Not a single corner stone was used in the whole job. The guys would start at opposite corners at the same time then both would move towards the center. At the center the faux stones were broken to fit the remaining spaces and you can only imagine what all that raw concrete looked like out there in the middle of a wall. There are areas where three and four courses maintain the same vertical joint. Pisses me off to even think about it. And this was a miilion-plus home.


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