Getting Stoned

In an effort to beautify the house as cheaply as possible sometimes you come across a jackpot. Our friends Tom and Suzanne had a large house they were selling and they needed to let go of a lot of stored items. Among the items they had were two pallets of Airstone which is a synthetic stone veneer. Tom had bought the Stone to finish off the walls of their basement but were initially over zealous. Since they knew about my house remodeling projects, they decided to sell the Airstone to me at a heavily discounted price. Now, I had the perfect solution for some ugly areas on the outside of the house.

After some inventory work and measuring the square footage it seemed that I had enough Airstone to complete 5 different projects on the house. These are: the face of the garage, outside the laundry room, the front porch, the dormer on the second floor, and the fire place. I was excited to have enough material to use in multiple areas so that the design of the house had an air of intentionality to it.

I had never hung stone veneer before so I just used some principles I had learned from tiling my bathroom. To start with I removed the old ugly vinyl siding off the house. Of course, with any old house project there was rot to contend with. So after replacing studs and plywood I spent a substantial amount of time to square up everything so that the stone would have a professional look. Hanging stone can be unforgiving if things are not square or level. Because this house had multiple changes over the years such as the laundry room being created by closing in the back porch and the front porch originally having a separate door to the downstairs bedroom, these areas needed some love to improve the ad hoc changes that were made in the past.

Next, I needed a stable substrate to adhere the stone to that could be waterproofed. So I decided to use 5/8 concrete board that created a rigid surface. Afterwards, I used mesh tape and mortar to fill in the seams. In order to protect the house from the elements, I used a waterproof membrane to paint onto the concrete board.

To mitigate future rot I spent a lot of time thinking about how to prevent water intrusion. So I used flashing principles to create my aluminum trim that joined the siding to my stone area. In many cases, I had to take aluminum stock at local hardware stores and rework it to fit my application. Finally, I made sure the windows and door were sealed up using a silicone caulk.

I finally felt I was ready to take a crack at hanging the stone. To give myself a solid base to start my first rows, I took two 1x4 boards and screwed them to the concrete board to act as a ledge to support the stone. For adhesive I used 3m exterior construction glue. Soon however, I found out that the stone was far from uniform and so I used a tile saw to cut and trim the edges of the stone to give a tight and level look.

While some areas were difficult to get stone to match while meeting at the top of a window or door, with a little fineness you can achieve a very workable finished product. Even though the time and difficulty of the project was far higher than the Airstone adverts would have you believe, I still think it was a project worth while.

I want to share a tip in case you plan on using Airstone outside. USE A SEALER! Within a year rainwater started to fade the color of the stone significantly especially in areas that got more water exposure. I called the company and they said that they 'don't get reports of that happening'. Despite their unhelpfulness, we used a stone sealer and it deepened the color slightly and has protected the stone from further color loss.

So voila, there you have it. A simple solution to spruce up the house. It turned the place were we live from a dumpy house in the hood to a respectable home that gets regular compliments from neighbors and friends. As time goes on with the projects, you will see how this project will tie in the entire house.