r/stonemasonry

I'm in the process of buying an old farm property in Scotland. It's got some dilapidated stone outbuildings, which need some work, including repointing all the mortar. But I also saw this. I'm guessing I _don't_ have an infestation of stone fungus, but other than that I'm thoroughly confused. What is it?

I'm talking 24" stone walls no concrete just natural hydraulic lime mortor

A couple of large scale seat/retaining walls my coworker and I have been working on since before Thanksgiving, enjoy!

I'm currently restoring an old cellar in Italy, house is about 200 years old and still structurally fine according to engineers even though there's not much of a foundation, stones laid directly on hard marl, grade is about in the middle of the stone part in this corner or about 150cm/5ft above floor.

During the rainy half of the year I get about a liter a day of water pooling down which isn't much of an issue, previous owners rendered everything with cement and made a cement mound to act like a drainage channel and it kind of worked besides the trapped water.

I'm restoring it to be a commercial cellar and can't have exposed soil or standing water, thinking about cutting the channel open to put a proper drain and covering the soil with some sort of breatheable render but I'm not getting any good suggestions from surveyors/builders so I'd be very grateful for any suggestions.

Not looking to put any modern or intensive solutions as the building currently is structurally sound and works for its intended use, just trying to divert the water, cover the subsoil and not cause any new problems.

Thanks in advance

Some landscaping I did

Looking for some second thoughts on how to handle this long horizontal gap running across the front exterior of my townhome. I see exposed wood and large gaps where I think insects are entering from.

This line is in between the ground floor and the middle floor of the home.

Should I seal this? If so, how? Masonry sealant?

Thanks

Can anybody tell me by looking at those photos what tipe of mortar I need to do some repointing of those bricks ? I know there are several different tipes. I am not sure if this mortar is just sand and cement or if there is lime in it. The house is an old terrace built probably between the 1920 and 1930 in Sheffield UK. Any advice is massively appreciated.

Cut and beveled these border pieces in the workshop, and spent the day laying them on a wet mortar bed. Nice and straight.

Hey all, just wanted to show my first attempts at stone masonry. The fire pit is about 5’ in diameter, and the shed wall is a veneer of natural stone (most of which i had to split to be thin enough).

Feel free to give feedback as I was doing these projects to explore techniques and build skills for another project.

Before moving in we asked our contractor to pressure wash the stamped concrete around our pool, but the guy he sent also did the front and back stone walkways. I specifically asked them not to do that because I didn't want to have to replace all the polymeric sand between the stones. A lot of the sand was blown out, and any small cracked areas became bigger cracked areas, and pieces of stone were in the grass and mulch, making it hard to piece back together.

These brown makes were a side effect that I wasn't expecting, and they're right on the two steps in front of our front door. Is it unreasonable if I ask the contractor to pay to replace these stones?

Hi r/stonemasonry and associated stone experts. I'm looking for some guidance on how to fix this stone slab which my dad used as part of one of his many letter carving projects. Unfortunately he passed away recently after a 5 year battle with Alzheimer's. I inherited this piece and it's one of my favourites pieces of his.

Does anyone know how I might go about fixing the two halves back together? And what the best products (I'm in the UK) would be for cleaning the front?

Thank you so much for any help you can give.

Ever see a Rock and think of all the things you'd do to it.. 😜 like this with a nice curve, about 4 MTRS long, around 250mm to 350mm by a pretty even 650mm give or take never actually measured it.

How do you even make this look good when every 5th stone is a triangle?

Do I need a metal lath for something so small?

I'm building a fire pit. I had some extra border stones and started building the core out of them. I plan to clad the exterior, top, and interior in stones.

I'll be using a refractory mortar for the interior details, and type s for the exterior.

(I've conducted refractory tests on a representative sample of the stones. This was done in environmental conditions that far exceed any natural conditions from wood fires/nature. These stones will not explode and will not spall.)

Ever since a kid I've always thought these looked so bad ass

Good boy for vibes

We walk this neighborhood. I've done a lot of stone work in this neighborhood when I was a lad, so I have fond memories

Philadelphia PA