Not Set in Stone
The golden glow of Santa Barbara sandstone is a hallmark of the coastal city’s early mansions and masonry walls. The warm look of the castle-style stone blocks is still popular today, but the cost of building with the heavy material can be a budget buster.
That was the challenge facing homeowner Jan Winford when plans for renovation of her 1907 Craftsman-style home called for extensive additions to the original sandstone walls. The solution: fake sandstone. A thin veneer of lightweight, synthetic sandstone was applied to new concrete-block retaining walls.
“Even my neighbor, a stickler for historical detail, didn’t detect that it was artificial stone,” Winford said. “It’s beautiful.”
Fake stone veneer, which is basically colored and molded cement, has become increasingly popular among homeowners and builders as better manufacturing techniques have dramatically improved its look and believability. Faux stone can also be two to three times less expensive than real stone.
Today, faux sandstone, limestone or river rock, among dozens of other manufactured stone veneers, is being used on everything from a Corona del Mar beach house to tract homes in Orange County to the Tuscany-inspired clubhouse at an upscale golf community in Rancho Santa Fe to buildings at the Mammoth Mountain ski resort area.
Even some homeowners who can afford the real thing are choosing manufactured stone.
“I actually installed a bunch on the house I’m building in Lake Arrowhead,” said John Ginger, owner of John Ginger Masonry, which has sold and installed natural and faux stone throughout Southern California for 25 years.
Ginger, who could have had his pick of the real stuff from his Riverside company’s supply yard, chose manufactured stone for its light weight and visual appeal. He mixed faux fieldstones and horizontal ledge stones, using mortar techniques to achieve a rustic look appropriate to his mountain site.
The trend has traveled beyond California, where several faux stone manufacturers are based. One dealer and installer in Colorado said he goes through three semi-trailers a week of manufactured stone, all of it from San Marcos, Calif.-based Eldorado Stone.
“We have six crews working full time, and we still can’t keep up,” said Ron Rossi, co-owner of Landscape Edging of Colorado Inc. in Littleton. He attributes the popularity in part to transplanted Californians who prefer stucco-and-stone houses to the brick or wood homes traditional to Colorado. To meet the increased demand, Eldorado Stone recently opened a new plant, its fifth nationwide, in Colorado.
Manufactured stone offers a relatively affordable alternative to natural stone. That cost advantage has become increasingly important to homeowners, architects and builders as the popularity of stone as a building material has grown over the last decade, according to Stone magazine editor Gregg Wallis.
Better cutting technology and increased competition from the growing number of natural stone companies have helped pushed down the cost of real stone in recent years, according to Wallis.
Natural stone may require more extensive--and expensive--installation procedures than lightweight faux stone. That’s one reason why the recent renovation of Winford’s Santa Barbara Craftsman used manufactured sandstone.
Installation of the sandstone block veneer cost about $12 a square foot, according to independent mason John Casey of Trabuco Canyon, who worked on the project last winter. Real sandstone would have cost about $40 a square foot.
“You get the same look for a fraction of the cost, plus it was easy to handle,” Casey said.
Because it is a relatively lightweight veneer, faux stone also can be used where real stone might be impractical or illegal. Earthquake concerns, for example, have limited the use of real stone or brick on chimneys in many cities.
Homeowner Peggy Rhoads of Corona del Mar was able to get the look of river rock on the chimney extending from her third-story roof deck by using lightweight faux stones. Real stones would have been impractical, she said.
“You are talking weight, unpredictability of size, heaving the stone up three stories,” said Rhoads, a principal of Rhoads Color Design. “There is no reason to quarry Mother Nature when they can make the stuff.”
Rhoads and her husband, an architect, used a mix of faux river rocks and smaller faux creek rocks for exterior accents on their bungalow, wainscoting in the outside entryway and on a wall on the perimeter of their property.
Of course, manufactured stone has its drawbacks. It chips and scratches more easily than stone because, as a cement product, it is softer than most natural stone. And because its colors are only surface deep, a chip or scratch will usually reveal the lighter cement underneath. (If the damage is serious enough, manufacturers suggest replacing the individual stone or having the area dyed.) Also, faux stone’s color can fade over the years if substandard pigments are used.
And although it is less expensive to install than most natural stone, faux stone is not a cheap product.
How real does it look? At a distance, most modern faux stone veneers look authentic. At arm’s length, how believable the veneer looks varies with the quality of the manufactured stone and the pattern. Some patterns are more realistic looking than others.
While company brochures and Web sites give an idea of the range of patterns and color palettes available, the best way to choose is to take a close look at the sample boards available at manufactured-stone dealers. Dealers are listed in the Yellow Pages under the heading Stone-Cast.
Once a pattern is chosen, experts agree that proper installation is critical to maximizing believability, whether the project is a single fireplace or a large building.
A talented and experienced do-it-yourselfer might be able to pull it off--Rhoads did the work on her property’s perimeter wall--but a professional installer may have a better chance at accomplishing the precision work required.
Rhoads’ faux-river-rock project on the house was a typical professional installation. First, a moisture barrier was applied to the surface. Next, a chicken-wire-like mesh was stapled on. Then, working in small areas at a time, a thin scratch coat of cement was applied. The faux rocks, which have a flat backside, were then stuck into the scratch coat. Finally, grout was applied between the stones.
Grout thickness and application technique may help or hinder the believability of a manufactured stone installation.
Some manufactured stone patterns come in multi-stone panels. The popular, modern-looking groutless stacked-stone pattern, for example, comes in Z-shaped panels that interlock.
Achieving a realistic-looking result also depends on a top-quality product. Manufacturers have been working hard in recent years to improve the look of faux stone. Most of those improvements have come in the mold technology and the coloration techniques.
The manufacturing process itself is simple: Wet cement is mixed with bits of pumice, expanded shale or other lightweight aggregate, then poured into prepared rubber molds. After it dries, the faux stone is unmolded and, after a drying period, is ready to use.
Manufacturers spend most of their creative effort improving their molds to better capture the dimensional detail of natural stone and creating new colors and application techniques.
Real stones collected from all over the world, and often custom carved by masons, are used to create the rubber molds. The faux stones are colored with natural mineral oxide pigments. The pigments are rubbed, sprinkled and sprayed onto the inside of the rubber mold before the cement is poured. Workers follow specific formulas to mimic the look of each type of stone.
Eldorado Stone, which was founded in the late 1960s when modern molds came into use, devotes an entire factory in Washington to research and development of rubber mold technology and color formulas. Like many manufacturers, Eldorado often creates new patterns and colors in response to requests from architects and builders.
That was how the company helped home builder Lennar Communities replicate the look of an old, hillside Tuscan village at the Bridges at Rancho Santa Fe. Working from photos of stone Tuscan buildings in books, and using stone samples on hand, the team came up with several stone styles, color palettes and grout colors.
Lennar knew they had a hit on their hands based on the response to the community’s sales office, where the faux stone was first used. The reaction was so positive, they expanded it to the gatehouse, the large clubhouse and then the swim-and-fitness center. A majority of the custom homes in the exclusive community also use the custom manufactured stone.
“People walk up to it and knock on it,” said Tom Martin, regional vice president of strategic marketing for Lennar Communities. “Nobody knows that it is manufactured stone unless they are told. That’s exactly what we hoped for.”
For More Information
Here’s a small sampling of Web sites for manufactured-stone companies: https://www.coronado.com, https://www.culturedstone.com and https://eldoradostone.com.
Many building supply companies, which often carry faux stone, do not have Web sites.
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Cyndia Zwahlen is a Colorado-based real estate and business writer.
