UMPHRESS MASONRY

The work was scheduled and took place within the estimated time frame (three days). They ordered the selected veneer stone from a local stone company and had it delivered to the house. The workers installed metal lath on the framed wall that was constructed by the fireplace installers. They installed the lath and a scratch coat on the first day. The second day, they started to lay the stone, and we noted that the mortar (grout) was not tinted, as we had specified. We reiterated that we had specified a particular color of mortar, and they returned from a local masonry supplier with tinted mortar. However, the color was not the one we had selected, but that was not clear until half of the wall was built (they said it would lighten, so although we examined the bag of mortar and even looked up the color on the internet, we were not sure it was wrong until it was too late). However, although it was not the color we selected, it was not a disaster; it looks fine with the stone. Two men were laying stone, and there was a clear side-to-side difference in stone selection and technique on the lower half of the wall; we asked them to attempt to unify the look on the rest of the wall, and the upper half of the wall looks as though one mason did the work. That brought the look of the whole wall together pretty well. They worked well around the mantels and the firebox, and did a neat job with stone cuts near the slanted cathedral ceiling. The end result was significantly more rustic than we envisioned, but hey, it's a fireplace, it should be a little rustic.