Getting Stoned

Remember the picture of the stone wall from months ago?

Well here is one (of many) current projects from my house. It's my own stone wall which is slowly being completed.

I started this project quite a few months ago. At times it was put on the back burner and other projects were given priority ie. painting the bedrooms prior to the carpet installation. I often refer to my endless jobs here as similar to the part in the Australian movie "The Castle". It's like those well known lines "... can you move the Camira? I need to get the Torana out to get to the Commodore..." (for my OS readers- these are all types of Australian cars, but some quite old)

Well my builders constructed a fantastic table on my side deck. It's the exact width of the fire place wall and they put a piece of timber at the top at the height and slope of the ceiling and a frame in the middle to represent the size of the fireplace insert. It's a huge heavy board on 4 of their timber work horses (Doug's favourites!) with 2 long metal trestle boards underneath for support.

Well Doug and Darren moved onto their new job 2 weeks ago and need their horses and trestles back. They have been very patient, but it's my "Castle" moment now. I had to finish the stone layout to stick them onto the internal fireplace wall, to move the big board, to seal the deck all in time for my 40th next month!

I am pleased to report I am making progress. On Sunday after loading my 10 cubic meter skip bin I finished my stone layout- what a great feeling.

It's been the biggest jig saw puzzle I've ever done!

This was how it began with the 2 types of stones arriving in boxes. There are also the 2 types of edge stones with the 90 degree corners which are in a top photo. 

Then it was a case of laying out the edges first and around the fireplace cutout. Then filling the middle parts. There was a lot a chipping with the stone hammer to get them fitting tight.

Then I got smart and mixed up some lumps of my soil with water into a paste. When I chipped away the stones the exposed part was the white cement colour so I used my paste to blend over it and camouflage the exposure.

And here's where I'm currently at. I'm transferring the stones in a similar order to my initial layout and bringing them inside. I'm using a premixed adhesive and going very slowly. Each stone sits on the ones below, so I can't work too fast or the bottom glue isn't dry and they all start to fall off. Some of the bigger stones I'm propping to hold while the glue dries. 

So far I'm really happy with result and I'm keeping my fingers crossed it will transfer over and look as good as my horizontal layout.