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Why You Should Use Stack Stone Veneer for Your Outdoor Kitchen

Whether you’re considering building an outdoor kitchen in your backyard, or you already have one that you want to upgrade, stack stone veneer will help you create a fabulous feature you can use for entertaining and family living. Unlike traditional structures built using natural stone, stack stone veneer is surprisingly easy to install and it is also an economical option.

One of our client’s beautiful outdoor kitchens using Stack Stone!

Traditional stonemasons would stack stone to build walls and structures of various kinds. They would cut the stone neatly to size and either stack it dry – usually for country garden walls – or with mortar to strengthen the structure.

The effect stack stone produces is neat and clean, and reminiscent of centuries-old craftsmanship.

Nowadays, there are very few traditional stonemasons worldwide. Not only is this a highly skilled craft, natural stone quarries are few and far between. Stone is also very heavy (and therefore expensive) to transport and it is hard on the hands.

Stone Stack Veneer

In recent years, stone veneer has become a popular alternative to solid stone. Initially, manufacturers made solid faux stone units that could be laid like the real thing. But today, manufactured stone veneer is relatively light and considerably easier to install. It is readily available countrywide and costs a fraction of the cost of natural stone both in terms of transportation and labor. In fact, some stone veneer products have been customized for the DIY market.

A sample of our Stack Stone Colors – Check them all out here!

  • Brown Stack
    Brown Stack
  • Coastal Blend Stack
    Coastal Blend Stack
  • Creek Blend Stack
    Creek Blend Stack
  • Cumberland Stack
    Cumberland Stack
  • Derby Brown Stack
    Derby Brown Stack

The Georgia-based faux stone specialists, Native Custom Stone, produce a range of stone veneer products suitable for indoor and outdoor use.

The company’s thin stack stone veneer is particularly versatile in terms of character, thickness, depth, and color. Stack patterns are clean and surprisingly contemporary in effect while appearing authentic at the same time.

Technologically advanced, stack stone units are manufactured for use in as many architectural applications you can think of. They offer numerous advantages, one of which is that no concrete foundation is required. This makes the stone stack veneer ideal for remodeling walls, indoor features like fireplaces, and backyard structures like outdoor kitchens and seating.

Another advantage is that the faux stack stone can be used as a cladding for almost every surface, including the walls of your outdoor kitchen, old or new.

For more information about Native Custom Stone stack stone veneer and other veneer products contact us today.

Skills Required for a DIY Stone Veneer Project

The skills required for any DIY stone veneer project will depend on the materials and methods used for the job. For instance, if you opt to use natural stone cut for use as a veneer, you will need good building skills even if you don’t cut the stone to size yourself. If, on the other hand, you decide to use man-made stone veneer, it will be a lot easier and quicker to install. And if you choose to use Native Custom Stone’s ingenious Go-Stone Panels, you don’t need any special skills at all.

Generally, natural stone veneer is a job for the professionals. Because of the weight, it will require a foundation, and the cut-stone veneer units will have to be laid in mortar. Depending on the size of the stone used, it might even need steel reinforcing.

Manufactured stone is a lot easier to work with, and it doesn’t usually need any concrete foundation or base. Go-Stone panels are even lighter

Skills Needed for a Faux Stone Veneer Project

Our #21 Aspen Ridge CustomFit Panels

Most faux stone veneer projects require basic building skills including knowledge of how to ensure everything is straight and square, as well as level and plumb. In essence, for any structure to be square it must have right-angled corners, horizontal surfaces must be flat and level and vertical surface must be plumb. All this means is that you need to know how to measure correctly and how to use a torpedo or spirit level since these tools allow you to check both horizontal and vertical surfaces. A builders’ square is useful for testing that corners are at right-angles.

While some faux stone veneer products can be laid dry and stacked without mortar, it is often better to use mortar. You can buy a pre-mixed product that comes in one bag for this.

It might take a bit of practice using a trowel to lay the mortar on the stone veneer, but it isn’t particularly different. If you work systematically, checking your vertical and horizontal levels as you go, there is no reason why you can’t achieve a professional finish.

Go-Stone is a unique product made partially from rubber tires. Because it comes in panels, it is a quicker process than laying a faux stone veneer. Nevertheless, you will need the same basic skills that relate to ensuring the veneer is straight, level, and plumb. Instead of working with mortar, Go-Stone panels are laid using a ceramic tile and stone adhesive.

Whether you opt for a faux stone veneer or Go-Stone panels, Native Custom Stone has products that offer lots of choices of finish and color. You’ll wonder why you ever considered using natural stone!

Build Your Own Outdoor Kitchen with Manufactured Stone

Outdoor Kitchen from #6 Walnut Stack stone from Native Custom Stone

In the summer months, there is nothing better for outdoor entertaining than an outdoor kitchen. The best type will include a place to cook, a place to clean, and storage space as well as seating for you and your family and friends. But the options are endless and the design choices as versatile as those you would consider for you indoor everyday kitchen.

An outdoor kitchen is more than just a deck or patio where you cook on a moveable barbecue unit like a Weber kettle or a gas cooker on wheels. To fulfill the definition, an outdoor kitchen should be built in and should incorporate all the necessary elements of your indoor kitchen. Ideally then, there will be cupboards and a sink with running water. Additionally, you might want to include a pizza oven, a fire pit, and maybe even a bar with a refrigerator.

The actual materials used to build your own outdoor kitchen are no different to the materials used for any other outdoor structures. Bricks and blocks are common and manufactured stone as a veneer has become increasingly popular in recent years. Stone veneer can be used as a cladding for ordinary cement or concrete bricks and blocks, or even for a framework made from lumber or steel and pressure-treated plywood or galvanized steel plate. Of course, solid natural stone is another option, but it’s heavy, expensive, and you’ll need a stonemason to cut and lay it. If you opt for concrete blocks and a stone veneer you could do it yourself!

Planning Your Outdoor Kitchen

The most important things to consider are:

  • What will be included in your outdoor kitchen. A gas unit will need a gas connection, and a sink will require plumbing. For the rest, the construction method you decide on will determine the skills needed for the project.
  • Exactly where it will be located. Both boundary lines and utility lines will have to be considered.
  • What permissions including permits you will need. Utility lines generally need safety permits. Your local authority will be able to advise whether you need plans and planning approval.
  • What sort of foundation, if any, will be required. However, this depends on what you are going to build. Many outdoor kitchen structures are defined as non-permanent because they literally sit on their own weight. 
  • What basic construction method you are going to follow. If you opt for a brick or block structure (blocks are probably the cheapest of all) you will need to know how to lay bricks or blocks or hire someone who does. Steel frames are relatively easy to install but might require some welding work.
  • Finish. A manufactured stone veneer will produce a magical effect with any of the construction methods chosen. 

Native Custom Stone offers stone veneer that mimics just about any type of natural stone from ashlar and stacked stone to river stone and great big blocks of stone. Because it is manufactured, it weighs a lot less than natural stone and can be installed easily and much more quickly. Call us to see which type of stone veneer will work best as a finish for your new outdoor kitchen project.

Using Custom Stone Veneer vs. Natural Stone for Your Project

Natural stone creates an amazing effect in homes and gardens, for walls and for feature structures including fireplaces, outdoor kitchens, water features and planters. But there’s a certain irony about this statement because you can create exactly the same effect using a custom stone veneer, and you’ll find it’s generally easier, cheaper, and much more manageable to maintain.

River Rock

While there is a certain mystique about natural stone, largely based on tradition and the age-old skills of practiced stonemasons, modern technology has enabled us to manufacture faux stone in various forms, including veneer. Custom stone veneer and other faux stone products are perfect for both construction and finishing projects. Stone veneer is also a great tool for revamping and renovating walls and other indoor and outdoor features.

Effects You Can Create Using Custom Stone Veneer

Here’s another irony: unless you have an unlimited budget for natural stone, you have many more choices in terms of the effects created by using faux stone and veneers than you do when using natural stone. The reason is simple. When you use the natural stone from the area where you live, you are limited to what stone occurs naturally. If you opt for faux stone blocks or custom stone veneer you are limited only by the range produced by an accessible manufacturer like Native Custom Stone.

The reality is that manufacturers offering manufactured stone veneer products have dozens of styles and colors. There are also numerous different finishes and sizes that will give you the opportunity to copy any effect from an elegant castle stone finish to a typical rubble effect like the traditional ashlar, commonly used in southern USA.

Alternatively, you might want something that looks as if it was built using genuine fieldstone or perhaps river rocks. No need to go into the field or seek out a river, a good quality custom stone veneer or manufactured stone will provide you with the materials you need.

Working With Stone Veneer Rather Than Natural Stone

Custom Fit Stone

Traditional stonemasons didn’t need university degrees to do their work, but they did need incredible skills that were generally passed down through the generations.

While stone can be used in the form of boulders or random blocks, unless you are building a rockery or irregular dry-stone structure, the stone will need to be cut into blocks or slabs that will slot together or enable them to be laid neatly and effectively. Natural stone is heavy and can be challenging to cut.

Stone veneer, on the other hand, is available in the form of individual units or simple panels. Interlocking panels in particular, are very easy to install without any skills at all, other than the ability to use a spirit level to ensure they are laid level. They are also lightweight and easy to handle. Furthermore, no foundations or additional structural support is required and they can be used to clad a variety of frame types, both metal and wood, or even a masonry structure.

Typically natural stone walls vary in size from about 2 to 30 ins (or 51 to 762 mm). Manufactured stone veneer, on the other hand, is substantially thinner than natural stone blocks, varying in size from about 1 to 3 ins (or 25 to no more than 76 mm), partly dependent on the texture chosen.

So if you like the effect of natural stone, explore the options offered by the Native Custom Stone range of veneer products.

 

 

 

See Native Custom Stone’s CustomFit Panels on Food Network’s ‘The Kitchen’

Updated 9/11/2015: The Kitchen Revealed episode aired on 8/29/2015 featuring a whole new look for the set! See Native Custom Stone’s CustomFit panels on the new set below!

The Kitchen, a Food Network talk show airing on Saturday mornings at 11a|10c, is based on everything cooking, dining, and eating.  Host Sunny Anderson along with co-hosts Katie Lee, Jeff Mauro, Marcela Valladolid and Geoffrey Zakarian try out new recipes, talk food and show us awesome new tools and utensils to use in the kitchen.

Recently, they reached out to us at Native Custom Stone to help them create a beautiful new set featuring our CustomFit Panels in the color “Mountain Ridge”.

The episode featuring our product will air on August 29th at 11 am – be sure to check it out!

FN-ShowLogo-TheKitchen-1920x1080

Also, be sure to check back after the episode airs for some great photos of our CustomFit panels installed!

 

Update: The episode has aired revealing a stunning new set for The Kitchen – Check out the new set below, including our CustomFit Panels in the color Mountain Ridge! We’ve been told that the “Living Room” set of the show will be used for many of the episodes airing in the Fall months, so check out the show Saturday mornings at 11am to see more!

customfit-fn-thekitchen

To see the entire set of The Kitchen and more photos of our CustomFir panels check out “Welcome to The Kitchen” on FoodNetwork.com, and for more information about the colors used Behr has an excellent piece on the makeover!

To learn more about our CustomFit Panels, contact us at Native Custom Stone today.

 

Top 3 Reasons You Should Use Manufactured Stone

Natural stone has always been associated with quality and luxury so it is often used in homes. With the increase in demand for natural stone the price has gradually risen until people started looking for a quality alternative. Many have found it in commercial manufactured stone products. Manufactured stone is made from concrete that has been poured into a mold for its shape and given iron oxide pigments for its coloration.

The products look exactly like natural stone but in reality, it is a veneer about 2 – 3 inches thick. This means that a manufactured stone product is a fraction of the weight of natural stone, making it much easier to work with. Once the stone veneer has been put into place, it can easily last for decades or more without deterioration.

If you are still considering using natural stone in your next construction project instead of commercial manufactured stone, then consider this:

  1. Adhered Stone VeneerManufactured stone is more efficient than natural stone. Natural stone will come in a range of shapes and sizes. Before it can be made to fit into a project it has to be cut and shaped. This is often very labor intensive and time consuming. Whereas manufactured stone can be cut into the shape needed and put into place with very little fuss.
  1. Commercial manufactured stone is cheaper to purchase than natural stone. Natural stone construction will need people with specialized skills, tools and materials like reinforced footing to hold up the enormous weight involved. Without these, a manufactured stone wall often costs 1/3 to ½ less than a natural stone wall.
  1. Manufactured stone is available in a much wider selection than natural stone. Natural stone is often found locally because it is so expensive to ship due to weight. Manufactured stone can be made to look like stone from anywhere in the world and it is light enough to ship if needed.

Using Manufactured Stone for Commercial Projects

Manufactured stone veneer offers many features that real stone can’t, and if taken advantage of it can make a big difference in the success of your next construction job.  If you are familiar with using natural stone in a lot of your projects, maybe reading a little bit about the great benefits of custom stone will changer your mind. You will have many projects done in half the time, at a fraction of the cost.

A few of the ways the manufactured stone surpasses natural stone are:

  1. Manufactured stone costs a small fraction of the current price for regular stone. This can come as a surprise to construction companies because they view natural stone as being cheap and plentiful.
  2. Since a manufactured stone veneer is all part of the same piece, it can be installed much faster than normal stone. This is a benefit to commercial locations that do not want part of their building to be off limits for an extended period of time because if foot traffic is impeded it can result in lost revenue.
  3. Manufactured stone veneers are much safer than a standard stone facing. If a natural stone were to come loose and hit someone it could cause serious injuries. Since the manufactured stone veneer is a single piece, you never have to worry about parts coming loose.
  4. You will stand out from the crowd. Most commercial companies want to look businesslike and stylish so they tend to use a lot of stone in their construction. It looks good but after awhile it all tends to blend together.  If you use a manufactured stone veneer, you can get any look that you want. You can have a veneer that perfectly emulates natural stone or you can have a veneer that perfectly reflects your own sense of style. You have complete control over how it will look in the end.

A great manufactured stone veneer is key when working on a commercial project. Customers are sure to be pleased with the quality, efficiency, and price of this great product.

Back-Splash: Update Your Kitchen with Manufactured Stone Veneer

Manufactured stone veneer is an excellent way to renovate any part of your home.  We have already talked about how you can make a fireplace more beautiful with the use of custom stone veneer, and today we are going to talk about the steps for installing a great back-splash to update your kitchen.

Back-splashes are great for a few different areas in your kitchen such as behind the sink, stove, or counter space.  Here are the materials that you will need for your project:

  • Chalk line
  • Level
  • Trowel
  • Mortar

Step 1:  Find a great manufactured stone veneer for your project. Once you have all of your materials. Follow your mortar manufacturer’s instructions for mixing the proper mortar-to-water ratio. Spread the mortar compound on the space that you will be installing your back-splash.

Step 2:  Use your level and chalk line to ensure that you’re working in an even line. Be sure to check your work with the level periodically.

Step 3:  Start installing your manufactured stone veneer in the design that you want.  Make sure that your stone is sufficiently placed in the mortar, but doesn’t slide.  Also, make sure to clean off mortar on the stone as you go.  If mortar is seeping out from your stones in excess you might want to start again and use less on your initial application.

Step 4:  Once all of your stones are in place, use a piping bag to fill in gaps between your manufactured stones.  Clean up excess mortar with a small grout trowel.

Step 5:  Clean up any mortar on your stones and allow them to dry, this should take no less than 24 hours.  However it’s wise to follow your manufacturer’s instructions on dry time.  Clean up your stones once they are dry, and with a back-splash behind a stove or sink it is recommended that you seal your project to prevent staining and moisture damamge.

There you have it, a great kitchen back-splash.  Make sure you use a quality manufactured stone veneer to ensure that your new kitchen will stand the test of time.


Top 5 Places to use Manufactured Stone Veneer in your Home

Your local faux stone supplier talks about these Top 5 most popular places to install Faux Stone in your home. Manufactured stone veneer is a material that’s becoming more used recently. Faux stone veneer can be added to almost any room, including its many outdoor uses. If you haven’t thought about manufactured stone veneer or you wanted to add more to your home take a look at this list below. You might think up another great home renovation idea!

The Top 5 Rooms and Spaces to use Manufactured Stone:

1.)    Finishing an above around basement. You can add manufactured stone directly to concrete to cover up what’s peeking out from under your home. It looks great and adds value to your house.

2.)    Manufactured Stone Panels can be used as siding to your home, window seals, or door frames. A classic, it will look as if you home is made entirely of stone. Not to mention that this type can be a do-it-yourself project!  It has gorgeous results!

3.)    Bathroom and Kitchen counters and cabinets are another wonderful idea! It will give your home a timeless elegance and great functionality.

4.)    Fireplaces look wonderful accented in manufactured stone veneer.

5.)    Outdoors you can use manufactured stone veneer to accent gazebos, archways, and pool side areas. It looks great and has relatively low maintenance.neer. As if the fire wasn’t warm enough the stone makes the room much more inviting and cozy.

So, as you can see there are so many uses for manufactured stone veneer in your home. Hopefully this opened you up to all of the potential your home has. Most manufactured stone veneer has the capability to be a do-it-yourself project. There are so many styles to choose from. Native Custom Stone has dozens of styles and designs to make sure you find the perfect fit for your home. Please, don’t hesitate, give them a call today!

The Elegant Look of Faux Stone Veneer

Home improvement is something that is on every homeowner’s mind. Sometimes a room just seems to be missing something, as far as design goes; as if just a little something would make a world of difference. Often what the room is lacking are accent pieces. Accent pieces are often what can bring a room to life and create just enough balances and counter balances to make the room really glow. One great product to use and that we will be discussing is faux stone veneer.

Faux stone veneer, as the name states, is fake however this does not mean that it looks fake. In fact, to any eye this manufactured stone looks authentic. This is largely due to innovative designs and processes in which the manufactured stone is molded directly off of natural stone to get a look that is precisely like the real stuff. This really ups the ante on appeal, and when you take into consideration the cheaper price, better durability and lower maintenance, there is very little that keeps people from opting for faux stone veneer.

Another thing to consider when working with this product is the actual heft of it. Obviously it is much lighter than natural stone and so requires less structural support and installation than real stone. Faux stone veneer can also be incorporated into small or large products and come in a variety of colors and designs, including stone but also woods, to suit any room or project that needs enhancing or full-scale remodeling. Make that fireplace really stand out with a manufactured stone veneer setting, or finish off the bathroom counters. The possibilities are many, so let your mind wander and explore the delights of having faux stone veneer a part of your interior or even exterior decorating! You can easily work this stone into the exterior of your home and even into your landscape. Give Native Custom Stone a call today to help decide which stone veneer would make your home look great.