Natural stone veneer on a fireplace.

As I finished the mantle (see my previous post), I moved forward with my fireplace's rejuvenation. Next step - the stone. After a lot of googleing, we (ie., my wife, as she is the CDO - chief design officer...) decided on the ERTHCoverings' ledgestone in Sydney Yellow. We had some discussions on the corners - I wanted "real" corners, to give the illusion of bigger stones, and she liked the look and feel of the ERTHCoverings veneer, so we went with that.

As it was visible in the post about the mantle, I've already covered the fireplace, and the wall above it, in 1/4 OSB. I don't know exactly what I was thinking... I wanted to staple metal lath to it and then PL Premium the stones through the lath, I guess. That I don't think would have worked.

A much better and easier way to do it is to PL Premium the stones directly to the OSB. As the regular PL Premium has some issues with the initial tack, I got some PL Premium Fast Grab from Lowe's.

Now the top part, flat on the wall, was relatively easier, and it only took me some 6 hours, during which I can say I learned several things - which served me well next day with the bottom part, more complex and including corners:

- do not use the same cutting wheel for too long - as its diameter decreases with use the cuts get shallower and the stone will be put through more stress when lightly hammering it to break after the cutting. I have an angle grinder with 4.5" diameter wheels, and from a $3.5 cutting wheel I could get probably some 5 or 6 big cuts, plus the grinding of the cut edges. For the whole project I used 10 wheels or so, but I should have used more... I just hope the little imperfections this caused are not easily visible in the final product;

- natural stone is very forgiving, I was able to hammer (using one of those rubber hammers) it into place here and there without problems, and even if it broke - the whole thing is built of broken pieces of stone, what difference does one more break make?

- even with the Fast Grab adhesive, pieces would slide down (at the top of the fireplace opening), so I had to support them with small screws which I screwed in just under them, one screw per piece - the adhesive will keep the pieces stuck to the wall, and the screw will keep them from sliding, so this way they stone is stuck in place until the adhesive cures.

The whole area to be covered has 45 sq ft, a rectangle of roughly 3' x 6' above the fireplace and the fireplace itself is 1'  deep, 6' wide and 4' tall with a 24" x 30" opening.

As I mentioned, I covered the fireplace with OSB first to have a flat (more or less) surface to stick the stones to. I used concrete screws for this, but the existing concrete pieces are made from a very weak concrete, so I had to be careful to not overtighten the screws. It is important here to have the boards as tight and fix as possible, but the adhesive will be a lot more forgiving with small moves than any lath and scratch coat.

In terms of materials, I used two 4' x 8' OSB boards and some 40 concrete screws, plus 18 wood screws for the top part. Also, 10 or so masonry cutting wheels - I wonder if a diamond blade would prove cheaper all in all, but at $30 I had a hard time choosing it. For the adhesive, I managed to use exactly 4 tubes of PL Premium Fast Grab, and several little screws for fixing the stone pieces, which I took out afterwards.

For tools, I used a pencil, ruler, hammer, rubber hammer, caulk gun and angle grinder. Also, a dust mask, gloves and safety glasses. For opening the adhesive tubes, an utility knife and a very long nail.

The conclusion is, just like with mantle finishing: patience wins the day. The whole thing proved to be much easier than I feared, the materials being really forgiving, but it is important to take your time and not rush. The one time when I rushed (it started raining for a bit and I was cutting stone on my uncovered desk in the backyard) I managed to break on piece of stone into small (unusable) bits. Just as with everything, what you sane in money you pay in time, but in this case the PL Premium proved to be such a better (faster, cleaner) way of achieving my goal, compared with the mess of mixing cement for the scratch coat and all that entitles.

The end result is in the picture at the top of this post, if you didn't notice it. The difference in colour temperature between the top and bottom parts comes from the light bulbs - the two bulbs that light the mantle and the top are incandescent, while the other bulbs in the room are CFL, and this makes the top part to look more red than the bottom.

Cheers.