The Unturned Stone

There’s grouting to be done and some more clean-up, but we are mostly done with the granite garden project, started three weeks ago. This photo, suffering for late afternoon sun, shows the big wall with the granite monoliths framed by stacked stone. Today we installed the beefy capstones, which serve double duty as curbstones for the driveway. The sweeping staircase is visible to the foreground- Pennsylvania bluestone treads over stacked risers. We cut the steps to fit the step radius from big slabs; our step scraps are visible leaning against the block wall. We made cardboard templates of each step and used our Achilli wet table saw to cut the desired shape. The finished treads are about 49 inches across and just barely fit on the saw.

Crossing over one of the monoliths.

Always with the marbles…

I engraved a nautilus into this six by six bluestone tile with a Dremel tool. I will do a future blog detailing the process I used because it’s a really easy way to get the line you want. This one is found on the stoop. There’s another at the top of the steps as well, suggesting the sweeping shape of the staircase.

There are several different types of mortared stone work represented in this project. The big wall with the monoliths is a free-standing structural stone wall. The backside- which is hidden from sight- is ugly as anything, but it’s solid and would stand even if the driveway weren’t there. On the house and along the stoop we built a mortared veneer, generally eight inches thick. There’s a small area on the house (behind the black drain-pipe) where we cut stones down to two inches thick and applied them with thinset, as if they were tile. We made this design decision so that the stone on the house foundation didn’t stick out oddly. The steps are also structural stonework, resembling castle walls, four feet thick with a mad amount of in-fill.

On our first day of wall building, I spent an afternoon working between two of the monoliths. I decided to recess the wall two inches back from the front edge of the big granite, for a visual effect. I didn’t like it and worried how it would impact the top of the wall. It took a laborer a day and half to remove about six square feet of wall with a sledgehammer, chisels and pry bars. It be plenty sturdy.

This past Sunday I put the finishing touches on this short stack of steps and adjacent walkway that lead into a tumultuous garden in South Asheville. The next project will extend the flagging at the top of the steps, including more leaves. I have a slab of granite picked out, but haven’t settled on a particular leaf yet.

Click this image for a full-sized version of this view of the inside of the cabin as it stands right now.

On Thursday we started a new project in North Asheville, creating a formal entrance as part of an extensive house renovation. The entranceway was designed in collaboration with Tony Hauser and Beth Gillespie of Ambient Design Group. This project has been in development for over a year and so it’s very exciting to actually be on site and working.

The house site is situated down a steep slope and the house entrance is a few feet below the driveway grade. A block wall retaining system holds up the driveway. It was suggested that we apply a stone veneer to the block wall. I have never seen this done and perhaps it is a standard practice somewhere, but it seemed like a very poor choice. The block wall is dry laid. Though it’s unlikely to move, it still has that ability. Building a rigid structure on the face of a flexible one seems to be inviting disaster. Leaning a dry stacked stone wall against the block wall was also suggested, but our stone wall would have only been a foot thick and not at all integrated with the wall behind it. I decided that the best solution would be to have a distinct footer for our work. The walls we’ll build will be structural, free-standing, sitting squarely on their own deep footing. This will be a little bit of stone veneer applied to the house foundation to blend the work together.

The first order of business was to install several granite monoliths, standing upright on a concrete footer. We used nylon straps, chains and Lewis pins to rig the stones so they could be lowered into the hole with the excavator. Danny Joe Brown, the excavator operator, removed the bucket to reduce the boom weight and to fit the arm into smaller spaces.

The machine, a 12,000 pound Bobcat, handled the work perfectly, even when craning 3,000 pounds rocks into a six foot hole. Danny Joe has 25 years experience and it showed. We all felt completely safe and never once had a worry that we or the property were in any danger.

We used Lewis pins drilled into the top of the stones to set the smaller rocks. These pins are rated for 3,000 pounds and are placed into drill holes without epoxy; the angle of the lift pulls the pins tight and prevents them from slipping out. The rigging is cinched so tightly to the excavator thumb so that we could slide the stone underneath the eaves of the house. The gutter and fascia boards were only about three feet above the top of the stone. Tight rigging and deft excavator work made all the difference.

The first monolith in place. The random board on the house is a bumper that will be removed later. Wood siding will disappear into that space with enough room for air circulation to ensure the boards don’t retain moisture.

The view from the driveway at the end of the day. We didn’t use the Lewis pins to set the two monsters that frame the top of the steps, each weighing over 3,000 pounds. We lowered the giants down into the hole flat using chains wrapped around their middles. We then stood them up by wrapping them with nylon straps that cinched the tops snugly. We could do this because the stones were tall enough so that, once placed, the straps weren’t pinned against the block wall.

This patio is part of the project that features the Big Bench seen below. Made primarily of Hooper’s Creek flagging, it also includes tumbled sandstone cobbles, river pebbles and other found stones. There’s even a millstone visible in the top left corner with a small depression in the center.

More to come…

In the hottest part of a 90+ degree day, we set this 1,500 slab as a bench as part of a patio project off Tunnel Road in Asheville. Despite its mass, this particular stone lacks tensile strength- a previous slab of similar dimensions had broken in half when flipped over uneven ground. We coaxed this one out of the truck down wooden ramps braced with old pallets. We made very sure to not shock load the timber ramps, as they would have surely broken.

It took four of us to flip the stone using rock bars. Three of us would have a ‘bite’, meaning we had good leverage under and good contact with the stone. The fourth person would pull their bar clear and get a deeper bite and continue lifting. Once they had a solid bite, the next person would pull their bar, re-bite and so on, so that incrementally the stone was raised and flipped. We flopped it over onto a couple of pallets, minimizing he likelihood of another fracture. The line visible in the stone was made with a diamond blade on a cut-off saw. We wanted to reduce the depth of the bench stone but didn’t want to risk drilling and wedges. Once flipped, we cut the other side.

The bench base is seen above, a dry laid double sided stone wall. We designed the bench to sit in the corner of the patio area. We planned that the front corners of the bench would be flush with the wall, but there would be a six inch overhang along the face. This allows you to tuck your legs under the bench and provides a nice shadow effect from across the patio. We slid and nudged and cajoled the stone into position using rock bars, an inch or so at a time.

Setting this monster was the last act of the day. We will add cap stones to help tie the bench to the wall. We also still have quite a bit of flagging to do before the patio itself is finished.

We have been focusing our efforts on readying the sides of the cabin for the first sill plates. We want to install them so we can begin setting the rafters. We will build the back gable end of the cabin to the rafters already in place. Previously we had rigged a string, but the constant wind made it difficult to work to the line. The rafters are 4″ by 12″ (actual not nominal) and will not flutter in the breeze.

This is a Dark-eyed junco nest I found tucked in the grass alongside a path behind the cabin. Note the strand of a wind torn blue tarp that made it into the nest material.