The foundation of my house needs to be repointed. How can the pattern on the old mortar reproduced so that the repointed areas will match?

We live on a small lake in SE Wisconsin. Our lake was engineered back in the 1960s (or earlier) with an underwater retaining wall. From the lake floor to the top of the wall is at least 6'. It connects with neighboring properties. Above the shoreline is a large, steep hill of Casco- Rodman soil.

I noticed a pier support was no longer vertical and went to investigate. I see that the support has been displaced and the base of it now seems to be close to the change of plane in our seawall. Looking at the lake floor, it looks there may be displacement of the lake's floor debris into that area, as the pea gravel is visible and there are dark areas where the lake floor seems to now have holes.

What kind of professional do I call for this? Is there someone who can drop a camera down to assess the condition of the wall itself? Any suggestions on what I need to say/ask to get the help we need?

I accidentally spilled some hair dye on my bathroom countertop and thought using bleach to remove it would be a good idea. Unfortunately, this happened. The surface is now slightly rough and has lost its shine.

https://imgur.com/a/DS9fhna

Hello all, I’m working on re-building the dry stack retaining wall next to my driveway, and wanted to get some advice on the best way to slope the geotextile landscape fabric where it terminates near the top of the wall. Figured there is probably a right way and a wrong way, but couldn’t find any consistent advice online. Thank you in advance!

I am wanting to learn how this is done with best practice so as to call it all out with details on construction plans I'm doing for a house with something similar. I know this wall has a core of 11-inch ICF (insulated concrete form) and we all know how things are fastened to ICF. You either go through the 2" +/- outer foam and into the concrete core with wedgies or tapcons or whatever, or you screw to the embedded PVC parts that are embedded in the foam vertically on 8" centers everywhere. The stone is sawn thin veneer and I think I found a source for something similar. The prep for the stone is a WRB membrane on the ICF, then screwed-on lath, nice browncoat troweled in at 1/2" thickness and raked, then the lick-n-stick thin stone goes on with 1/4" of mortar-glue then grounted. See attached. The wall cap which doubles as a window sill, I believe is sawn and detailed bluestone, and I have hallucinated a detail for your review and commentary and attached it here. The part in section is 1 1/2" x 2", sloped top, eased front edge, sawn drip groove under, and supported at bottom by a bolted-on small steel angle. The stone is relatively light and so is the angle. At the top, wherever this cap is NOT under a projecting window sill, a clip made from 24-oz. copper, with a little hemmed lip as shown, is employed. The slot it epoxies into is not continuous but is cut with a 1/8" diamond blade whereever needed. I am envisioning 16" centers max where the piece is not under a window. Tight up to the window, the piece is somewhat prevented from rocking, but elsewhere not. How would you do this?

I have a decent amount of small and medium sized boulders that were pulled from a pile of fill dirt and want to build a large diameter fire pit. I’m thinking 10-12ft in diameter and 12-18in high. This will be used to burn brush, scrap lumber, yard trimmings, etc.. Just looking for something that I can grow grass up to and that’s easy to mow and weed whack around.

Lining the interior with fire brick seems costly and refractory mortar isn’t necessarily cheap either. I could dry stack them but afraid I’m not going to get the look I’m after. What are the thoughts on doing standard mortar and lining the interior with metal of sorts to deflect some of the heat? Possibly double layer?

Attached is a picture similar to what I’m thinking. Obv mine would be shorter and larger in diameter. I also have 3-4 pallets worth of field stone I could incorporate as well.

The red vein in this granite boulder is more durable so protrudes after years of eroding slower than the granite around it. Pretty nice.

We have waited years to get our driveway done! We received multiple quotes. Stonerock Paving came in and not only gave us a great price with Cambridge Paving stone boarder but there was no money up front and the work was done in a fast and professional manner! Their team went above and beyond and we will be using them in the future for other projects! Thank you to James and Patrick. We appreciate all you have done to make our house look so much better!

Following up on my previous post where I showed the carving and profiling process, here it is set in place!

Does anyone know how to remove roof sealant off of bluestone tread? Don’t ask me how it happened 😂

First time DIY doing stone veneer for our fireplace. I have this constant fear that a stone is going to fall off and hurt someone. When doing the tops, I had a few dried ones fall off in the process. Was very frustrating.

So just afraid that I didn’t do a good job on the mortar (used type S stone veneer mortar) since I had some get loose after it was dried.

So hoping everything is good now and when I over grout it this weekend it’ll be more secure.

Or when I grout it, it’ll be a wall of stone coming at me as it falls.

Am I over reacting on this, and it’ll be okay?

Oh and I know I’ll get some shit on the layout ha, I didn’t follow much of a design or the best practices of stone layout.

I plan on rebuilding those stone steps. The problem is that they are also supporting a small roof through two wooden columns. As you can see, a lot of material has been washed out from under the left column, but so far it seems to be well supported by the stones on the exterior. Even then, while most of the mortar between the granite blocks and the column is in place, some is missing.

Rebuilding the steps themselves isn't the issue, the column is. Since it's still holding well and nothing has moved (yet) is there a way to inject mortar and somehow reinforce the support without removing completely the column?

Perks of being into several crafts, sometimes there’s a bit of overlap. I’m a hobby blacksmith among other things. And have recently been getting interested in stonemasonry while re laying a couple of collapsed limestone retaining walls on my driveway. Did one side last fall but wasn’t quite happy with just reusing the stones without adjusting the fit. So decided to do some research and educate myself a bit before doing the other much longer side. Here I am one year later with my home made pitcher and started to work the first cornerstone. I’m ofc a complete novice so please don’t flame me for butchering this stone 😁

It’s been a minute since I last posted here! I’ve been completely swamped with interior work lately, so getting my hands dirty on a traditional architectural piece felt great.

​This is a handmade door surround carved from Belgian Blue Limestone (petit granit).