6 Top Contractor Flaws When Installing Manufactured Stone

In the heirarchy of increasing your home’s for-sale asking price and improving its curb appeal, it’s aluminum siding, then brick, and then the highest ROI is for manufactured stone.

Indulge in a mental picture for a minute of a romantic night spent watching the flames dancing around in a roaring fire. Is the fireplace you’re imagining framed against a stark white wall? Or is that fireplace of your dreams surrounded by a hearth of stone?

Thought so.

John Marasco of Marasco Stone in Canonsburg, PA, has definite ideas about how fireplaces, chimneys, walls and home exteriors should be covered in stone. Although he started his career in home improvement, he ventured into computer programming and stayed for 23 years.

Programming is black and white, right or wrong. Ones or zeroes. If you don’t program it right, it won’t run. So John learned how to be a perfectionist.

One day John got the word that his job was being eliminated, going off-shore. So he trained the six people it took to replace him, and thought about what he wanted to do next. That’s when the stone-setting business found him. It was the perfect business for a confirmed perfectionist.

John can show you exactly what sloppy stone work looks like. Because until a perfectionist points out flaws to you, you may not recognize the difference in quality work when you see it. Right outside Marasco Stone’s showroom, where he’s constructed multiple manufactured stone wall displays in every type of stone color, shape and setting, there’s an imperfect stone wall.

Of course, John didn’t do that job. But he likes to show homeowners the difference between right vs. wrong in stone setting. So they can see for themselves what meticulous work looks like compared with the way a lot of contractors slap up stone, add grout and call it a day.

“For me, everything has to be perfect. It takes me a little longer than everyone else to complete my work. But when I’m done with a job, it looks good, and I’ll get no call backs,” he said. Once John got the ultimate compliment–from another contractor–who told him, “Your work’s nice and clean…my crew couldn’t have done that job as well.” Making John a stone-setter’s stone setter.

So we asked him…Exactly what makes manufactured stone work “good” vs. “bad?”

Here are John’s top 6 contractor flaws when installing manufactured stone in your home:

1. Bad stone work shows a separation, gaps in the grout line. Grout lines should be uniform.
2. Grout on the stone is a sign of sloppy work; the cement should always be wiped off.
3. Poor raking of the grout can leave holes underneath the stone, setting up your wall up for deterioration later on.
4. Each stone should be leveled. John says he actually puts his level on top of every stone in the project. If it doesn’t behave, he pulls out the crooked stone and and replaces it. “If you don’t level each stone, the end result looks like a ‘rolling mountain range,’” he said.
5. Get references and go see the contractor’s work. Don’t look at the job from the curb. Go right up to it and inspect the grout work. Is the raking uniform? Every job looks good at eye level. So get down on the ground and look at the job from the bottom 2′ up.
6. Watch for “faulting.” Make sure there are no holes under the grout line. That’s how water comes down over the stone and then gets up underneath. Poor grouting and raking leave little holes. And when grout’s not raked tight to the stone, ultimately there’s deterioration. Could be in 6 months, 1 year or 5 years, but stone work should last 30-50 years, depending on the stone manufacturer.

Follow John’s advice and you’ll end up with perfect manufactured stone work. It will be all right there in black and white for anyone to see.

Originally posted 2009-06-04 10:00:00.

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Tagged as: bad grouting, maufactured stone, stone chimney, stone facade, stone fireplace, stone setting