Stone veneer installation in San Angelo TX - stone on a sound wall that sheds water

Most people call because they want the front of the house, a porch or a fireplace faced in stone, and the first thing I ask about isn't the stone. It's the wall it's going on, because stone is heavy and it holds any water that gets behind it, so a weak or rotting wall has to be dealt with before anything covers it. The price moves with the square footage, natural or manufactured stone, how much the wall needs before we start and how many windows, doors and corners we have to work around. The schedule mostly turns on that prep work. I'll give you a figure for your own wall when I come out and look at it.

I start with the wall itself, because industry guidance puts adhered stone only on sound walls, not on ones that are deteriorating or on EIFS, the foam-and-stucco finish some houses have. If the wall needs work, we fix it first. On an outside wall over framing, the water barrier goes up next. That's the wrap behind the stone. Industry guidance also calls for flashing, metal strips that shed water, at every opening and along the stone's bottom edge, and we take the barrier and flashing seriously because that's where veneer jobs usually go wrong. Over old brick or block, one maker's guide has the mortar and face checked, then the surface cleaned by pressure washing, acid washing or blasting, with lath going on first if it won't come clean. After that comes the scratch coat, the first layer of mortar, and then we set the stone, fill the joints and clean up. Indoor stone skips the flashing unless it'll be exposed to water, and then we treat it like outside work.

Sometimes the wall you want faced in stone isn't built yet. A stone-faced yard wall usually starts as one of our concrete block walls, and on a new addition, foundation block wall installation gives the stone a solid wall to sit on. When we build the wall ourselves, I already know what's behind the stone.

Whether stone veneer on your house needs a city permit is a question for San Angelo's Building Permits & Inspections office, and I'd rather they answer it than guess. If your job does need one, we handle the paperwork with that office and plan our work around the inspections. City rules say anyone doing permit work in San Angelo has to be registered with the building official, so that's worth asking any installer about. You can reach the office at 325-657-4210, Monday through Friday, 8 am to noon and 1 to 5 p.m.

Here we see a lot of brick houses where owners want stone on a porch, a chimney or part of the front, and framed walls where stone goes over wood sheathing once the siding comes off. We do both kinds of job all over San Angelo and the cities around it, and the wall underneath decides the method every time.