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Building a Home

Suggestions for cost effective stone?

14 years ago

Hello all. Been lurking for a few months and had been a contributor on the Home Decorating forum in the past. We are having a plan drawn for a house and will be pricing it out to determine if we will proceed with the build (hope so!!). I have been planning to avoid stone because of the cost and planned to use some brick and hardiplank for the exterior. I am now really wanting to use some stone for variety and interest, and am wondering if there are big cost differences in stones? Are there some kinds I should look for and others to avoid? Is the labor involved with stone more than brick? I would prefer to use real stone versus cultured, but I am open to suggestions. Thanks for any insight you can give me as I look into this aspect of the build.

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Comments (7)

highjumpgirl
14 years ago
We are very excited about the stone we're using from General Shale for our foundation. I think it's a concrete-made stone, but is very realistic and is beautiful. We thought it would be out of our price range, but our quote from GS came in surprisingly low. They made no bones about the fact that they were desperate for orders....
polkadots
Original Author
14 years ago
Thanks highjumpgirl! I just spent some time on their website - looks interesting. I will check into it - I see there is a distributor about 5 miles from my house!

Would you mind sharing what product and color you are using? Thanks for your help!
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In Raleigh, it is very consistent. Spec houses = tyvek or similar. Custom = Zip. Anytime you try something different, you are ignoring millions of other experiments that generally do fine. Is there a problem that you know about that is occuring on a large portion of houses? Are you concerned about siding life expectancy or moisture in walls or poor air sealing? What does happen all the time is that houses are leaky and people pay more for heating/cooling than they have to. But the wall drying systems aren't a huge problem as far as I see. I have lived here for 25 years, owned 7 houses, have a reasonable amount of friends who own houses and have never seen or heard of a wall drying problem. And there is some crap construction going on. I am absolutely sure there is some but fiber cement will outlast your ownership and maybe the house's life. Heck, I have a 1983 house with original Masonite siding. I haven't done anything to it in the 5 years we owned it (maybe the prior owners were really good but evidence suggests they were average). I can probably paint 1 more time and have a 50 year life in it. I have seen issues at the coast personally with Vinyl siding over tyvex. But dealing with 30 inches of sideways rain is not something that is common in central NC. I don't think it helped that there is sheathing on both sides of the framing for strength. The wall has closed cell foam now so hopefully that will help (didn't redo the outside wall at all and time was a factor). My vote, zip and forget it. You aren't personally building the house and you want a simple to get right plan. I would encourage some foam in the zip +/- 2x6 construction. Focus on the details of the crawl/foundation - that is something still done poorly with clear negative impact. Slab or sealed crawl.
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gopintos
14 years ago
I LOVE mine also.

{{gwi:1416784}}
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Okay I could go on and on with the pictures :-)
I used Autumn Blend in a Canyon Ledgestone and off hand I can't remember the brick but it is a panel.
tracey_b
14 years ago
"brick panel"? Can you tell more more? Is it less expensive than individual bricks?

Thanks.
sweeby
14 years ago
Go to a stoneyard near you and ask. There's no better way to find out pricing information. Depending on where you live, you'll find that some stones are much more/less expensive than others.

You said you preferred natural stone to cultured -- the 'stones' mentioned/shown so far are all cultured. Once you learn how to tell the difference it's pretty easy to see -- so if you really have a preference, the time to find that out is now.
polkadots
Original Author
14 years ago
Thanks for the input. Gopintos, your house is looking wonderful - enjoy the process!

Sweeby, thanks for your thoughts, that's exactly what I did today! Saw the product mentioned above by highjumpgirl and then saw some other natural stones. The stones quarried in my state are less expensive and may be an option based on what I saw. Seems like stone is at least worth considering to see if it fits with our house design and budget. Thanks.
blondie859111
14 years ago
We're using StoneCraft and love the product. We've used cobble on our chimney and are using heritage on the hearth (inside) and gable end (outside).

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