Lessons learned on my first alt.home.repair mortar & flagstone job! (thanks to all)

[Chuck Banshee]

Oh yeah. I forgot to mention I'm learning that snapping lines is critical.

So I bought a chalk line and started snapping away.

The edge against the wall is easy to get the runoff slope:

But how do you get the slope away from the wall lined up? (I snapped a line on the form but I'm positive that form will move as I jostle it about.)

Note: I used hard plastic tubing for a joint spacer (which I can pull away while the concrete is wet, I hope).

This should leave a tunnel for water to flow outward if more cracks form in the connection between the wall and the stone mortar.

[gfretwell]

A real mason never actually touches the mortar and they could be working in a white shirt and dress pants. That is the big difference between them and amateurs.

They manage to pick up the perfect amount of mortar, flip it off the tip of the trowel and it ends up right where it is supposed to go.

A big part of the trick is getting the mortar mixed right.

I usually end up with mortar in my ear ;-)

It sounds like you are on your way, now you just need some practice.

[gfretwell]

I usually mix the mortar in a white bucket with a mud paddle on a 1/2" drill.

[chaniarts]

the same way you slope a patio.

you pound in sticks in each corner, then connect them with string, making the string be the top level of the flagstone. you tie off the string so that it is your slope.

[chaniarts]

you know, you could just go to the library and check out a book on tiling and one on making stone/brick patios. they'd have answered every one of the questions you've asked here.

[The Daring Dufas]

Four decades ago, I had a summer job when I was on break from college. I got a job in a brick factory stacking brick after it cooled down enough from being fired in the big kilns. Cloth gloves lasted a day so the experienced guys had leather with a grit added rubber coating on the palms and contact areas of the fingers. Those gloves lasted a month at least. ^_^

TDD

[Chuck Banshee]

Now that's interesting!

All my right-hand fingertips were bloody by the end of yesterday!

I 'thought' they were worn by the grit.

Is everyone saying they're actually bloody due to melting of the skin by a high (basic) pH?

[Chuck Banshee]

Someone else mentioned that a 'real mason' also doesn't need forms.

Having read that, I 'tried' (and failed) to do the first set of stones yesterday sans a wood form - but - hastily - I had to erect one as shown by this picture of my mistake:

From now on, it's forms ahead of time (even though they take a lot of time)!

[Chuck Banshee]

As you intimate, there was concrete everywhere!

I finally resorted to throwing the tools into a bucket of water next to me instead of putting them down on the ground to keep the concrete from hardening (as shown by this picture):

It took 7 hours, from the first stone to the last, to complete the job. In hindsight, I did almost everything wrong.

For just one example, the chalk line was a joke!

Sure, it 'looked' great! At first. Like disappearing ink, it washed away, was brushed away, was covered by mortar, etc.

Only in hindsight can I say the chalk line (as shown in this picture) turned out to be almost useless the way I did it!

[Chuck Banshee]

The entire job is already on a concrete footer (of unknown thickness), so, I hope, it's sturdy!

Since the bag of concrete says "not to be used under 2 inches", I first started using 100% mortar for the inch and a half I needed to raise the shelf before laying the stone on top.

But, then I ran out of mortar (mistake #105 ... buy more mortar than you need). So I had to resort to concrete.

What I did was lift up all the stones again (for the umpteenth time), scrape away all the mortar down to the footer, and then dump the concrete and then lay a thinner layer of mortar on top.

One other lesson I inadvertently learned was that the form gets in the way of the wheelbarrow as shown in this picture here:

In the end, I should have planned this all out much better as I was correcting mistakes made in planning more so than in laying it all out!

[Chuck Banshee]

I had never thought of using a power tool to mix the 60# bags of mortar.

In the end, I switched to 1/2 mortar and 1/2 concrete (with the concrete on the bottom layer) so I gave up on the buckets, especially after going crazy mixing in a RECTANGULAR Costco detergent bucket (the corners were killing me!).

So, I progressed from mixing: a) In rectangular (new) Costco detergent buckets (corners are killers) b) To tubular (old) Costco detergent buckets (too small) c) To the wheelbarrow (which is just right for two bags of concrete/ mortar)

In the end, I learned to soak the cleanup towels in the wheelbarrow, used as a reservoir as shown in this picture:

[Chuck Banshee]

If I hadn't made so many mistakes, I guess I wouldn't have learned anything!

Here, for example, is a picture of what happens if I pound too hard on a water-soaked sandstone block trying to level it with its neighbors:

The blasted thing broke in half!

[Chuck Banshee]

Yeah. Lots and lots of practice!

For example, here's a basic mistake in making the form higher than the stone.

Only when I realized that made it impossible to level the stones lengthwise, did I learn that the form must be below the top of the stone.

I tried using a bubble level (the small round one and the short one for strings) - but the stone is wavy so they were useless.

In the end, I didn't level the stones lengthwise at all. Lesson learned!

[Chuck Banshee]

Another lesson learned was to cut the stakes for the form.

I kept catching my clothes on them, and, especially during the 7th hour of this, I kept tripping over them.

I couldn't drive them in any deeper (they were hitting something mighty hard - probably concrete) so I should have cut them off with the saw so I wouldn't have tripped on them so many times!

[The Daring Dufas]

Darn feller! You abraded and dissolved the skin off your fingers. I once bought something from W.W. Grainger called Liquid Glove. I don't recall which version or from which manufacturer but I think it was in a tube not a tub.

TDD

[chaniarts]

like a helicopter is really a bunch of parts flying in formation, sandstone is sand just barely held together. it is very soft. don't beat on it.

[Larry W]

If you make that same mistake with the forms again, just lay a straight sided block of wood shorter than the form width, and taller than the height of the form above the concrete, then put the level on top of the block.

[Norminn]

You laid a 2x4 across it and tapped on the 2x4?

[Chuck Banshee]

At first I did try the 2x4 but then I just tapped directly on the sandstone. The stone broke. So, for all the rest of the stones, I didn't soak them in water nor did I tap as hard.

Unfortunately, partially as a result, water pools on the shelf in the wrong spots.

But, it will have to do. Luckily it doesn't rain all that much out here.

[Chuck Banshee]

You are observant.

In TWO places there was a sprinkler head within an inch of where I put the shelf. I had no choice.

One of those two places had to be shored up with a form, which required stakes as shown in this picture below:

So, while I don't know where the water line lies, the stakes must be VERY CLOSE to them. I didn't think to test. I'll test tomorrow. I hope I missed them!