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Full-Bed Stone and Natural Stone
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Jan 24, 2024
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View Video Transcript
0:00
In this video, I want to give you an overview of what's called full bed stone
0:06
This is a little different than other stone options you might have available
0:10
to you. It's a modern, relatively economical, efficient, yet authentic looking way of adding stone to your home. And this home here is an excellent
0:22
example of high quality full bed stone. It has a traditional look, which I really
0:29
like. It's got these corner stones here around the openings and some lintel
0:35
stones across the top. There's corner stones on the corners of the buildings
0:39
of the building. And most importantly, it's got a nice sort of rough, hand-hewn
0:46
texture, as you can see here. And that shows off light and shadow, as well as
0:51
visual variety, different shapes of stones, in quite a pleasing way. So this
0:57
is an excellent example of a full bed stone home. The pattern would be
1:03
loosely called broken ashlar. And it's kind of what most people look for when
1:10
they think of a stone home. Same thing going on here, a little bit of a
1:15
different style. The mortar joints are handled somewhat differently. The shapes of the stone are somewhat different. I'll be talking a little bit more about that
1:24
later. This particular stonework is also combined with brick, which is something
1:30
I'm going to teach you about here. And in this case, you know, over here and over
1:36
here, there's some stucco going on as well, too. But this is another
1:40
traditionally shaped home with, I would call it, a little bit less formal looking
1:47
stone than you saw in the previous house. Another great home here
1:53
full bed stone. We've got some more of that broken ashlar pattern, which I'll
1:58
explain in some detail coming up. This particular stone is worked in a way so
2:04
that the stones don't stick out that much. They don't sort of round out. They're a
2:09
little bit more flat, gives it a little bit more of a refined look. Mortar joints
2:15
are recessed, which means that they're a little bit back from the face of the
2:20
stone. Something to think about there. We'll get to that in a minute, too. But
2:25
just another example of how full bed stone can be used. I'll give you some
2:31
ideas and perhaps a little bit of inspiration. Now, this is stonework as
2:37
well, but it wouldn't be called broken ashlar. It's generally called a
2:41
random pattern, which makes sense since there's not really a pattern to it. In
2:46
this case, the arches over the garage doors were done in brick, which given
2:52
this kind of stone, it makes a lot of sense. It would be very hard to make an arch out of this kind of stone because it's not regular enough. So that's why
3:00
they, that's one reason they've used brick here. It's also a style element as
3:04
well. Now, this house happens to be the house I built myself. I did all the
3:10
stonework myself and it looks like some of the full bed stones you've seen in
3:15
the, previously in this video, but it's not. This is actual natural stonework. So
3:22
each one of these stones I have cut and chiseled to shape. So this is a
3:29
traditional approach. It looks great, works great. The world still has lots of
3:35
natural stone in it. Not manufactured stone like the full bed stone is. This
3:41
comes out of the ground and we shape it directly out of the ground. The problem
3:45
with this is it's very, very labor-intensive. It takes a ton of work to
3:49
do this because we're essentially taking raw stone and turning it into something
3:53
regular. Now this is a photo under the veranda of my house and you can see the
3:59
light and shadow texture thing going on, as well as the different sizes and
4:04
shapes of stone. Here's the same house a little higher up. The light is showing
4:10
in a way that really highlights the mortar joints and the stone shapes. And
4:16
although this isn't typically, this traditional full bed stonework, full bed stonework works the same way as this and it delivers the same virtues. As I
4:27
said, light and shadow and a variety, a visual variety and texture. This is a
4:34
pile of really great natural building stone. This is what I would have used to
4:39
make the stone house. This is my stone, part of my stone yard and turning this
4:45
into the house is a matter of stone saw and some hand tool work. Same thing going
4:51
on here. This is great building stone, believe it or not. This is what we have
4:57
to turn it into. Essentially what we're doing is taking raw stone and fashioning
5:03
it into regular or semi-regular shapes on site and then laying the stone. And
5:09
the biggest difference between manufactured full bed stone and natural stone is that this work of making the pieces regular with full bed
5:18
manufactured stone, that happens in the factory. So it saves a ton of labor and
5:24
you can really get a very authentic looking result too. It's surprising in
5:28
fact how authentic it can look. Here's another kind of stone. This is not full
5:36
bed stone. This is what's called thin stone and the difference between this
5:41
and full bed stone is that this stuff actually hangs on a wooden wall frame of
5:45
the house. It's an inch, inch and a half thick or so and it fastens with clips
5:51
that go on like this with mortar applied later. So this is quite different than
5:58
full bed stone. It's very different than natural stone and you know it's an
6:05
option. I don't really like it as much as the full bed or natural bed option
6:10
because it's a little less authentic but I just wanted to point it out to you. So
6:14
you understand the essentially the three main types of stone work that are out
6:19
there. The full bed manufactured, the natural traditional stone worked by hand
6:24
and then this thin stone which fastens in one way or the other either with
6:29
clips or just plain adhesive to the wall of the house. But now this wall here, this
6:36
gets us to the main topic of this video which is full bed manufactured stone. So
6:44
believe it or not this stuff was made in a factory. It looks very authentic and
6:50
the best full bed stone options, manufactured options really do look extremely authentic. I mean even as someone who has worked with stone for
6:58
more than 30 years I have to get right up to the best manufactured stone to see
7:03
that it's not actually natural stuff that comes out of the ground. So very
7:07
authentic looking. When this stuff comes on to a building site it's already cut
7:14
to size. So for instance this stone here, the width, the height, that's the way it
7:20
arrived in the building site. Same with this one here and it was all already
7:25
chiseled to have that stick out kind of shadow catching look. The advantage, the
7:33
cost advantage of full bed stone comes as I said because this stuff is ready to
7:39
lay essentially. It's been pre-engineered into a pattern in fact so that for instance this stone here plus the height of this stone here plus the
7:51
thickness of the mortar joints here and here equals the height of this stone
7:56
here. This stone plus this stone equals this stone. This stone plus this stone
8:03
equals these two stones in height. So realistically you're probably saving two
8:11
three four times the labor with the full bed manufactured stone which is why it's
8:17
really popular. Even with people who have lots and lots of money they just can't
8:22
justify going with the authentic natural stonework because it costs just so much
8:28
more and the look is not that different. So that's why it's popular. That's why
8:32
it's really taking off and making a big difference in homes in a lot of
8:36
different places. So the stonework before had slightly recessed mortar joints. Well
8:45
let me go back and take a look. So by that I mean you can see the edges of the
8:49
stone. You can see in particular right here. Right here we can see an edge. The
8:54
mortar comes up to the edge but not quite enough to cover it. That's the look
9:00
that you get with this particular approach to mortar joints. It's a fairly
9:05
modern approach this recessed stuff. They never did it a hundred years ago. They
9:09
always covered the mortar joints completely and the edges of the stone
9:13
but this gives it a nice clean sort of modern yet traditional look. This home
9:19
here has mortar joints that just barely cover the edges of the stone and if you
9:27
take a closer look. Let's go over here. You can see that the edges are as I said
9:39
they're just barely hidden. You should know too that actually this isn't a
9:43
particularly neat job and you should learn what a good quality job and not so
9:51
good quality job looks like. You can see here stray bits of mortar staining the
9:58
faces of the stone. Not a whole lot but enough that it I think it detracts from
10:04
the look a little bit. The mason could have been neater. He could have spent
10:08
more time cleaning the stone after the mortar started to get half hard too. I
10:11
mean that would have made it look nicer. Now this is a much more traditional
10:17
mortar joint approach and there's two things you need to recognize about it
10:23
First of all the edges of the stones are all covered. We don't see any edges of
10:28
stone and there has been lines put into the mortar joint while the mortar was
10:34
still soft and that creates a much more regular look. It's something that was
10:39
almost always done years ago. You know a century ago or more. You hardly ever see
10:45
it in modern work but if you're looking for an approach that delivers a real
10:50
vintage look, covering the mortar joints like this will do it. Especially if you
10:56
have those mortar joints delineated with a line like you see here. The lines in
11:02
this case are perfectly plumb and level and that's why they create a more
11:07
refined appearance. Here's another way to deal with full bed manufactured stone
11:14
and that is with a sawn surface. So look over here for instance this is stone
11:21
manufactured stone. It has a smooth surface which simulates machine sawn limestone. So very regular blocks all the same height and most of them are the
11:34
same length and they're very smooth. This is probably the most refined approach to
11:42
stonework. I'm not really fussy about it myself personally because you don't get
11:47
that light and shadow texture business which I find so pleasing but flat smooth
11:53
stonework definitely an option and maybe you like it. Now this is a an interesting
12:00
combination here. We have stone with brick used around the openings and on
12:08
the corners. You don't see this sort of thing too often. If you do see a
12:14
combination it's kind of a reverse really where bricks would make up most
12:19
of the wall with stones used in the corners and around the window openings
12:24
But this is just an interesting approach. This is actually an older building. It's
12:29
from the 1800s but the example is still instructive that you can combine like
12:36
this. Here's another approach to where the stonework is fairly random. I
12:44
mean I wouldn't say it's anything like the regular stonework that we saw
12:49
earlier. It's much more random than that. It has recessed joints. This kind of
12:54
approach is pretty popular right now especially with stone that's even thinner
12:58
than this. Even thinner from top to bottom and it works well. It creates an
13:03
informal look sort of a country cottage kind of look and maybe that's something
13:09
that you'd like to pursue as well. And just finally before I finish up, this is
13:15
a classic modern stone home and it's got a lot of the things that I've been
13:22
talking about. So there's the regular stonework, coarsed stonework. So when I
13:27
say coarsed I mean the stones are are laid in layers. We have the texture thing
13:32
going on. Within the stone itself there's slight color variations. In this
13:38
particular example they have used brick around the windows and then up on the
13:43
eaves too. Quite a nice combination I think and this essentially is what full
13:49
bed manufactured stone can let you do
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