In that last post, I don’t mean to imply that all veneer stone walls come from shady dealings, by any means, or that they are bad in and of themselves. I use veneer stone walls in plenty of my projects, and veneer is a valuable construction method in any number of applications. Often they are the best solution for a given site. And certainly there’s plenty of stone to go around in New England.
The cutting of larger, weathered wall stone into much smaller, weathered-face pieces is what I’m wondering about, and have no solid answers. Those smaller cut pieces can make a stunning chimney face, or interior stone wall, or, as in the case featured recently on a popular TV program, a knockout modern retaining wall backing a narrow reflecting pool. But each weathered stone taken from an old wall and cut up for one of those elements provides incentive for the removal and cutting up of the stones from other old (and still viable) walls.
On the other hand, not everyone wants the weathered look. A contractor once told me about a client for whom he had built a handsome fieldstone wall, one that he had been at great pains to use stone with nicely lichened faces. There was even a little moss on some of the stones, and because of that and its careful design, the wall looked comfortably situated in the landscape from the start. The client, who had been out of town and away from the project since approving the design, came home, saw the wall, and called his contractor. “What is this?!” he asked — “I don’t want old, used stone in my wall! I thought I was getting new stone!” The contractor shook his head as he told me the story, laughing at the idea of having to source stone that hadn’t been around for millennia….
Deborah Howe
Toby Wolf
So, we are having a fieldstone wall built. They started today. It does not look like the old fieldstone wall in the other part of the yard although they said they would build one like it. I’m guessing the stone is just not weathered. Is this correct??
Cindy — It may be that the stone isn’t weathered, it may be that the jointing looks different, or the stone size, or composition. A traditional New England dry-laid stone wall usually has bigger stones on the bottom, with stone size diminishing as the courses stack to the top of the wall. Except when that’s not the case — in Rhode Island and southern Massachusetts you can see dry-laid stone walls built with the biggest stones — boulders, often — on the tops of the walls. Other styles use flat stone, stacked.
Every mason’s stonework has a different flavor from every other mason’s stonework, too, in the way that one person’s handwriting differs from everyone else’s. One of the appeals of using weathered stone is that the patina tends to make a sort of overlay on the patterning a mason uses, and that patina may becomes one of the things you look at first, and value most, about your wall. Aging can make a wall look great!
A couple of things you may see in a well-made dry-laid (or veneer) wall: First, every vertical joint between two stones should be topped with a single stone — that is, you want to see vertical joints staggered within the wall. Staggering the joints helps keep weather (moisture, mainly) from accumulating in a long joint running from top to bottom, and so helps preserve the wall. Long vertical joints attract your eye, and they are likely to be spots that will fail first over time.
Second: every corner of the wall should be made with stone — that is, you don’t want to see two pieces of stone joined at the wall’s corner. The mason will wither find stones with right angles in them to make the corner, or will chisel stones to make them work. A corner that holds a joint rather than solid stone signifies that stone isn’t really holding up the wall (the way you want it to look, regardless of construction style), but that the stone is a veneer on top of the real wall. It’s a look, but it’s better to have it at least appear that stone, a structural material, is doing its structural job.
Thanks for your question.