New Construction Window Choices & Culture Stone

[EddieWalker]

Alan,

A few homes use real Austin Stone for their exterior finish, but otherwise, it's almost all cultured stone. Since you have some experience with it, you realize how it's designed for easy installation. Real stone is very smooth on the back and relies on stacking it for instaltion. Cultrured stone has the rough back for easy and stong instals.

A good money saving method might be to have the house sealed up, but not have the exterior rock installed. It's real easy to do, just time consuming. Why pay a crew an hourly wage to install it when you can do it yourself over time?

Steph never did it before I showed her, and an hour later she was better then me. She has an eye for it and is a perfectionist, so her results actually come out better than mine. LOL

I have it outside on my entrance gates and sign. There is no wear, discoloration or aging on it. I'm sure some brands are better than others, but if you stay with a national brand, I'd assume the quality should be top notch.

Eddie

 

[scott_vt]

Hi Alan,
I dont know how informative this info is, but when I built my home in Ct back in 1982 we decided to go with Anderson. I built a three bedroom saltbox colonial, and decided on the Anderson Thermopane double hung windows. We were able to get the teratone color frame, vinyl clad, that went well with our barn red color.

Im sure today the windows are much nore efficient and they also offer a much wider selection of colors and options.

Anderson does stand behind there products, about 10 years ago we began having a problem with a skylight upstairs and they replaced the whole window no charge.

Good luck in your decision.

scotty

 

[MadReferee]

Did you know that "cultured" stones are really concrete?

Around here in the northeast they take a sheet mold containing many different sizes and shapes of stones, dust the molds with a coloring dust, maybe put a reinforcing screen over the molds for a backer, then fill the molds with lightweight concrete.

When the dry "stones" are removed from the molds and there will be slight variations in color depending on how they were dusted. The various sized stones are then mixed together on a pallet and shipped out.

As Eddie said, since they are really concrete they will stand up to the weather quite nicely.

Just today's little factoid.

 

[Alan L.]

Thanks for the good information. Apart from the cultured stone itself, I wonder how the way it is installed (applied to the wall directly) might affect the resistance of the wall behind it from moisture, as compared to veneer with an air space. I also wonder if there is any significant difference in the energy efficiency. It would seem minimal since the insulation (I plan on 2 by 6 wall with sprayed cellulose) provides most of the energy efficiency anyway.

 

[MadReferee]

For indoor installation, my contractor first coated the plywood frame with a special sealer. Then he stapled up a mesh wire backing to the plywood frame. Then a layer of thinset mortar then the stones. The backs of the stones were first soaked with water then a special sealant/glue that looked like water was applied to the back of the stones then the stones were set into the thinset. A day or so later, the space between the stones was grouted with a special thinset that looks like real outdoor cement. It's really, really hard to tell they are not real heavy stones.

 

[EddieWalker]

On brick walls, you put OSB on at the corners, then half inch foam on the rest of the walls. The brick is held in place from teh brick ledge on the foundation and cleats nailed to the studs. Brick is just a vineer and stands apart from the house by an inch, give or take.

For rock, all the exterior walss have to be done in OSB. More money. Than it has to be sealed. Usually felt paper, but I've seen house wrap used too. Then the metal lathe is fastened to the OSB and studs. This is what holds the rock to the wall.

Theres more involved to rock in prep time, but the actual instalation is usually faster and easier.

Eddie

 

[Tom_H]

Hi Alan,

I used Marvin when I built my log home 13 years ago. The windows are very good, except that I made the mistake of using wood on interior and exterior so as to match the house being made of stainable wood. If I had it to do over, I certainly would have used aluminum with baked on brown acrylic paint on the outside and wood on the inside. I have to restain every 2 or 3 years and have to do considerable touch-up staining every year. Paint would have been better on the exterior wood than the stain, but I have now seen high quality aluminum exterior with factory applied paint and it not only looks great but is virtually maintenance free.

We have cultured stone on the exterior facade of the stem wall and on the fireplaces inside. Both have worked very well. We went with an artificial river rock look called Tahoe Blend. Not only do they cost less, they are easier for the mason to apply than actual cobble, take less time, and thus are less $ in labor as well. One suggestion is that before you settle on a style and color, ask for references to houses where you can actually go look at it as applied. Not that the material is substandard, but the big picture of the finished look often isn't quite the same as looking at one or two pieces at the store and trying to visualize it in your mind.

Also ask your mason for references where you can look at his/her work. We had separate teams for the 2 fireplaces and a 3rd for the exterior. Our master bedroom gas fireplace was done first and the masons broke up pieces to fit in odd spaces. It looks bad. The team for the fireplace in the great room fitted the pieces so that it looked like a jigsaw puzzle created by Mother Nature herself, absolutely beautiful fits. Later, when I interviewed masons for the stem wall, I found a guy whose work and price I liked. When I hired him, I actually offered to pay him 10% more than his asking price if he would take extra time to make the pieces fit very tight and sweet with virtually no space between the pieces. He accepted and he kept his end of the bargain too. The fit was outstanding.

Good luck!

 

[Jagmandave]

Alan,
We're in the final planning stage for our new home, and to get a quote on Pella windows, we just went to the local Pella dealer with our plans. They made up a list and priced it out for us. This was after we had gone to the local Casa de Depot and had them do the same thing. The price was the same incidentally - so I think HD just called Pella with the list!

Anyway, there are a bunch of different levels of quality, as someone else mentioned, so I'm going to do a bit more investigation before we spec it out. For our 2700 sq ft house, the Pella "Pro" series French doors and windows came to over $15K!

But as others have mentioned, freedom from maint will be high on my list, along with energy efficiency and looks.

Good luck with your project, we all look forward to your starting your construction thread, and as always - lots o pics please!

 

[Alan L.]

Eddie, around here all the builders seem to put up OSB and Tyvek house wrap on the whole house before brick, rock or whatever. When I was a teenager working for my Dad who was a builder, we put some black gypsum stuff called gyplap or something like that. The framing had diagonal supports on the corners and seems like we might have put plywood on the corners on some houses, but the black stuff wouldn't provide an structural strength because it was basically like sheetrock.

 

[Alan L.]

I hope to keep my windows and doors under $10K, but that might not be possible. I think one thing I need to do is visit some showrooms where they have the windows and also the stone. Seems like last time we built, most of these dealers were closed on Saturday which made it difficult.