The stone porch columns go up....

We finally got around to doing the stone work on columns supporting our 40x10 ft covered porch. There are 5 columns ranging in height from about 7 feet to 1.5 feet tall. They started out life as 8x8 CMU blocks on a 20x20 footing. We filled the blocks with concrete and rebar.

All of the stones have come off of our 20 ac development. We jokingly talk about going to the stone store, which is the new drive that was cut into the hill side on the property. It is lined with tons and tons of mainly pink granite. When we were doing the timber frame we also often had to go to the lumber yard to get "one more" timber. We would go up the driveway and find one of the 80 ft standing dead southern yellow pine, drop it, drag it to the saw mill in 13 ft lengths, cut it up and within a few hours it was in the frame.

There is a learning curve with the stone work. The mortar was too wet at first and the stones were slumping off the side of the column. This is a pain when it happens 3 times in a row after about 1 hour of stone work each time. That is when we stiffened up the mix and worked on two columns at once, alternating between them so they have a chance to dry. As you can see we are going for the "old timey" look so it takes less skill.

This was a great opportunity for Stephanie, Joshua, Jacob (in the picture), and me to work together gathering stones and tossing them into the back of the truck. All in all this is a fun project.