Cultured Stone

[dml000]

I would like to do my fireplace in cultured stone. (Owens Corning)
Has anyone installed it?

 

[burntime]

I just put pro-line stone over a course fireplace brick...It was not bad. The gouting between the stone was a little taxing on the hands I just looked up a bunch with the same stone to get an idea of placement ( I used lannon stone) and tackled the job. Here it is with-out the hearth stones. It is hard work but it pays off

 

[Shane]

We've done quite a few of them. Put lathe over it with a skin coat then go to town. It's nice stuff, light weight and the majority of it looks amazingly realistic.

 

[brian_in_idaho]

I would like to do my fireplace in cultured stone. (Owens Corning)
Has anyone installed it?

DML, are you talking about a "surround" for a stove or insert, or an actual built-in masonry fireplace? And are you thinking about doing the work yourself or having it done?

I installed cultured stone on the front of my house, it's not a bad job, kind of fun actually. The hardest part is mixing and matching the pieces to get a nice pattern without big gaps. Kind of like a big puzzle w/o matching pieces. My advice is if you do it yourself, get a cheap "chop saw" from Harbor Freight, I think mine was around $60 on sale. It makes it easy to cut any odd corners off to make the pieces fit. We did a "ledgerstone" style, with a rounded "river rock" you usually have a bigger grout line, this probably wouldn't be an issue.

I'm going to work on my stove surround/hearth this weekend, if you like I'll post some pics of the project as I go along. I need to do a bit of research on a couple of details.

Shane, I'm planning on putting concrete backer board on steel studs for the 1/2 wall "surround" for my stove, this in turn will be covered with the CS. Over sheetrock or osb I know you need to put a vapor barrier (roofing felt), and the CS manual recommends this even with CBB. I don't want to do the barrier over the CBB, since the barrier is combustable. Do you do your cultured stone directly over concrete backer board and lath?

Bri

 

[dml000]

I would like to try doing it myself.

I have an existing fireplace that is brick with a bluestone hearth which I tore down this week.


Now, I have to frame it out and go from there. I just have to find some info on how to properly frame it out and so on.
Is there a good book that would be helpful?

Brian, that sounds good, I would like to see your progress!

I do anything I can around the house because of cost and quality! When I do projects I put love into the work. It may take a while because I am fussy!

 

[Shane]

For your situation I'd go without it. I have done it and I know Elk is going to read this and school me on why I shouldn't have but it worked fine and haven't had any ill effects yet. When facing a fireplace we don't put the felt within the clearances required by NFPA, but outside of that we go ahead and do it.