Sorry to OP for hijacking this thread! Gardenchick! Thank you for your advice. Hadn't thought about the ledgestone on the gables. That might be what is making me think twice about it. We will have 2 gables accented with the stone and also a border around the house. DH and I are trying to compromise on this one. As far as the grout, I was thinking that the type used on Limestone makes a big difference in the look. Can't decide which one I like better because they all are very nice. In addition to going to look at the Cultured Stone, there is an area close by that has a lot of very old stone homes and an old farm nearby that has their old home and barn in stone. I'm going to drive through those neighborhoods and examine their type and style. Hope they don't think I'm some crazy lady! We are in the northeast. Building on 21 acres, with pond and some wooded area, not in a housing development. We are placing the home on top of the property, overlooking farmland, woods and our pond. Started the dig for the driveway and gas well awhile back. I guess our style of home is a mix. I jokingly said on another thread that it was old world meets the mountain or something like that. Inspirations came from lots of searching on the net,(this site included), driving around neighborhoods and new construction, from the different style of those to the style of the HGTV 2006 dream home and just recently added to that eclectic mix, the MidWest Living 2007 Idea house. We also want to make sure our home fits the property, but most importantly our family and our lifestyle, (4 young boys.), and yet something different then what is being built all around us, if that makes sense. DH really wanted to do all brick and stone but the cost for both would make us have to cut other things...some that DH didn't want to lose, and I just can't live without the stone, so we are compromising with shakes/board&batten and stone. We are meeting with hopefully what will become asap "the" builder tomorrow. Wish us luck, cross fingers, send prayers...we need it all!! LOL! We just want to start already--UGH!!

Not hard, it just takes a lot of time and patience. I did it with ledgestone which has long narrow pieces and had a lot of difficulty getting the pieces to stick with regular mortar. I switched to thinset mortar and it worked great. Thinset is a little messier to deal with, but it grabs much better. If your stucco is painted you will have to use thinset anyway. A small tile saw will come in handy for the edges where you may need to cut a piece to fit.

arapaho - thanks for your kind words! I am sure your home will be beautiful. You picked a such a rich and versatile stone... Part of the frustration is you can go in so many directions with it! If it weren't for those builders' palettes I don't know what I would have done. For us, picking the exterior was the most difficult selection for the house. BTW, bigger square footage just means the mess gets spread over a larger area. Just ask my 5 kids! ; )

@Sarah, Thanks so much! It actually turned out better than we expected. Yes, It's El Dorado Grand Banks Limestone. When the pieces arrived I thought they made an accident and we received the wrong product, they looked like cheap granite. I wasn't very excited with the wall until our happy accident of over-grouting. We knew we wanted a soft white grout color but didn't want to spend hundreds of dollars on pre-colored grout so we played with adding different amounts of brown permacolor grout to white mortar. We'd put some on a stone and let it dry overnight. We came to the ratio of 1/2 cup Laticrete Permacolor grout in Tawny for each 44 lb bag of Mapei White Keraflex SG Mortar. We mixed the dry mixture fully to avoid color pockets before adding water. We piped the mortar in and when it was still a bit soft we wiped it with a wet sponge allowing some of the residue to settle on top of the stones.