Massachusetts · Rhode Island · Connecticut · New Hampshire · Maine
Foundations, columns, chimneys and facades, in natural and manufactured stone.
Price your project →Veneer is not waterproof and is not meant to be. Water gets behind it, and what happens next is decided by whether there is a way out — weather-resistant barrier, a drainage gap, flashing and weeps at the bottom. Veneer laid tight to sheathing traps it.
A tooled joint sheds water off the face. A flush joint holds it against the stone, and held water is what freezes and spalls the face off.
Stone is heavy and something has to hold it. A supporting ledge, or lath and scratch coat specified for the weight, decided before the first stone goes up rather than discovered when the bottom course starts to sag.
Coursing, corners and the way stones are sorted for size is the difference between stonework and stone stuck to a wall. It is laid out dry before it is set.
Every wall and patio we have taken apart failed for one of these five reasons. They are most of what separates a job that looks right at twenty years from one that does not make five.
Compacted gravel, deep enough for the ground it sits in. Every course above copies the first one, and so does every mistake in it.
New England ground moves in winter. A footing poured above the frost line lifts with it, and the wall on top of it cracks — not that winter, usually the third one.
Saturated soil expands about nine percent when it freezes, against something that cannot move. Clean stone, fabric, and a pipe run out to daylight.
A tooled joint sheds water off the face of the stone. A joint struck flush holds it there, and held water is what freezes.
The top takes the weather and everything anyone sets on it. Pitched away, set solid, joints tight.
If something we built moves, cracks or fails in the first year because of how it was built, we come back and fix it. No argument, no invoice.
Trace the job on a satellite view of your own property, or send a photograph, and the page prices it. The on-site visit is free and it is what makes it exact.