To put up the stone veneer over our brick wall, its recommended to put a scratch coat up first.  So after putting up the metal lathe, I’ve covered it all in a mixture of 1 part Type N Masonry Cement to 1 part All-purpose Sand.  Mixing up the cement and applying it was pretty tiring so I did it in two separate coats (one of which is still wet in the picture).  I was happy to see that it dried well and is securely fastened to the wall with no voids.  I was a bit concerned that I wouldn’t be able to get enough mortar through the lathe to fill the gabs in the brick.

I also learned  that I apparently hung the metal lathe in the wrong direction, its supposed to be put up horizontally, and in a particular direction so that it holds the mortar better.  Fortunately this didn’t seem to cause any problems.  To help the mortar adhere to the scratch coat you are supposed to ‘comb’  (or scratch i suppose) the scratch coat, to allow the mortar to adhere better.  However since I didn’t have cement comb, I just put some grooves in it with the tip of my trowel.

The family room is getting some nice stone for around the fireplace, and stone requires mortar to install.  Mortar comes in many different types (the main ingredients being cement and sand), but they’re all dirty, and they’re all heavy.  For our fireplace we got a 94lb bag of Portland cement, a couple of 70lb bags of Type N Masonry Cement, and a 50 lb bag of thinset.  In addition we got a handful of 50lb bags of sand to use as aggregate.  Now since I’m not a civil engineer I haven’t taken any classes on Cement, so I’m just going by the manufacturer’s recommendations.  Eldorado Stone recommends that the scratch coat be made out of 2 Parts Type N Masonry Cement, and 3-5 parts sand.  They also say that the mortar should be 2 parts modified thinset, 3 parts Portland cement, and 7 parts sand.    The only problem with all of this, is that all of these products are basically crushed stone, and are therefore all very heavy.  This means that we had about 600lbs worth of material in the trunk of my car, which is probably significantly more than it was designed for.

The hearth of our old fireplace was made of the same bricks that make up the wall.  For the new fireplace we ordered a nice big piece of Pennsylvania bluestone.   The 5’x18″x2″ piece of bluestone weighed in at about 250lbs, so once agian I called upon my friend Greg to not only transport the stone home, but to also give me a hand installing it.

I left a decent bit of the old brick hearth behind, so that I wouldn’t need to use that much mortar to set the stone in.  Once I decoded the nomenclature of the various Quickrete products they sell at Lowes, I was able to mix up some mortar using a 3-1 ratio of sand (All-Purpose as opposed to the Play, and Medium sand) and Type N Masonry cement.  I mixed it with some water till it was reasonably thick but still workable.  I’ve read that the most common mistake first-timers make when mixing cement is to add to much water, so I tried to avoid that.  Once the mortar was mixed (which was a surprising amount of work) I spread it on top of the remaining bricks, and then lowered the stone into place.  I used a small piece of 2×4 to keep the piece level while it setup.