Stonescapes

  Spent the last few weeks down in Freeport working with Kurt Snyder and Stonescapes building some granite walls. As always, Kurt is a pleasure to work with, and it was nice to work with Lance again, as well as Zack and Bija.

                                                              Damon and Lance...

                                                     Kurt and Lance's Fine Stonewall...

The Daily Street News

  Sixteen feet of retaining wall out of Guinea Ridge wallstone, which is basically yet another variation on the Heritage Valley, Belfast Heritage, Norumbega strain. It comes off of Guinea Ridge out in Burketville and is sold by the Pease family, who are probably the hardest working and most honest people I have ever dealt with. (Also can be found at Viking Hardscapes on Rt. 90.) I like it because it seems to have a good variety of thicknesses and we wanted to have some thinner ones for this smaller wall, so as to still have some movement across the face. If you build an eighteen-inch tall wall out of six-inch thick stones, you basically end up with a wall three rocks high, and it just doesn't look very exciting. This, on the other hand, this is exciting.

  Look at the colors, too. Actually, the rock is still pretty dirty from being in the ground and will weather well over time, decreasing the browns and bringing out the blues and greens.

  We even ripped out a few bricks that were under the fireplace, and replaced them with wallstone, which really integrated the whole structure and brought everything together.

  We did this job for Michael Geer of Celebration Works Carpentry (236-0030) and a customer of his from my home state of Tennessee. Yee-haw! She was really nice and Michael is a pleasure to work with. He's easy-going, with a boat-builder's eye to detail and a classic love of craftsmanship, and we are looking forward to working with him in the future.

High St. Wall Repair

  A little wall repair on High St. for Tim Massey of Endeavour Builders. (A link to their fine website on the left.)  The wall was apparently struck by an careening automobile a few years ago and so lay heaped in a pile rapidly overgrowing with cedar roots.  We pulled the whole thing apart, put down a substantial bed of crushed stone, as well as crushed stone and filter fabric behind. It should stand the test of time, barring any unforeseen acts of vehicular wall-slaughter.