Edinburgh Stonemason Recent Projects

This building on the left in Midlothian had severe erosion problems to the bottom 100cm of the masonry. In fact it had eroded back over 15cm as a result of salty water being splashed over the bottom metre by passing traffic.

The salt used to grit our roads is very caustic, and the problems this has caused to this building are very common.

We cut back around 20cm of the stone and replaced this with brand new masonry, dressed, built and pointed to perfectly match the original stonework.

You will see that we matched the style of building the original mason has used and that the individual stone piece sizes are the same sizes as used in the original building.

These two elements are critical when blending new masonry with old. We could have made the remedial work even more precise to the point of being invisible to the naked eye by using matching reclaimed weathered stone, however having discussed this at length with the owner of the property, we opted instead to use a very durable freshly quarried stone in an attempt to slow down this process of chemical erosion.

This property to the right had also experienced severe erosion problems, but as the original mason had used a more random bond of rubble, we have aimed to replicate this.

For this project we “Dirtied" up the new stone somewhat to ensure a more accurate blend with the existing stonework. The result is a very inconspicuous major repair.

This particular building is around 250 years old.

When making mortar based repairs to old buildings, our main priority is to make the repairs as inconspicuous as possible.

We do this by colour matching our lime based mortar to the average colour of the existing stone.

We then carefully replicate the stones' required profile, shape, texture etc, and add tool marks to mimic the surrounding stonework.

After this we use a traditional stonemasons' trick to dirty down the masonry repair to make it look old.

As you can see – the results are well worth the effort.

Here you can see close ups of stone repairs to 2 mullions, and in the front elevation shot, the elevation pictured had a total of 23 stone repairs carried out.

The final result is a very inconspicuous, high quality stone repair.

This building on the right was a new build project in Midlothian. It was originally a glass fronted shop.

Our client supplied us with a truck load of mishaped random sized pieces of flat faced stone and a pile of, if we are honest, not very attractive stone he got free from a local stone merchant.

Our challenge on this project was to make something presentable from the assortment of stone that our client had provided us with.

This is a project that we are exceptionally proud of – giving whole new meaning to the phrase “a silk purse from a sows ear”.

For this project we were asked to do something creative with a very tired brick built wall.

At the outset, the client would have opted for a new stone wall, but did not have the budget for this.

We produced a stone effect rendering and hand pointed it. We then formed a tidy wee cope to the wall using paving stones, and engaged a traditional blacksmith we work with to add the railings on top.

At the end of the project our client was delighted with the results, and even now many people complement him on his “natural stone” wall.

A beautifully restored old wall we brought back to life.

This project required over 100 stones to be replaced, and totally repointed in a sympathetic lime mortar.

The client was overjoyed at his "new" wall.

This driveway on the left was for a gentleman client in Edinburgh.

We first formed an aperture in the wall and removed 3 skipfuls of soil and a 40ft sycamore tree! We then poured a 15cm thick concrete base and clad this with natural stone slabs.

Next was the building of the driveway perimeter walls to the right and top of the drive, topped off with a paving stone cope. The existing wall to the left was repointed with lime mortar.

We then dropped his kerb to local authority specifications, and finally engaged a blacksmith to build and fit his bespoke gates.

The result? The best looking driveway in Murrayfield.

This property to the right, is an example of a new-build project.

This is 15cm thick sandstone cladding forming the front of two existing flats above a shop in Dalkeith, Midlothian.

This work was carried out around ten years ago and still looks great today.