It has been a busy few weeks here at Living Stone Masonry. While working on a large project in East Asheville, we were contacted to help out with the restoration of the Vance Monument in Downtown Asheville. I jumped at the chance to be involved with restoring one of Asheville's most notable stone structures, and we started the next day.
Day 9 of the 10 day project. We had to work some seriously long hours to complete the work, but it was worth it!
The work we were hired to do was a very important part of the restoration work; its called repointing. Over the years, maintenance of the monument was neglected, and water and time were starting to cause serious damage to the appearance and strength of the monument. We started at the top of the scaffold and worked our way down, chipping out almost all of the joints, placing new mortar, and ensuring that it cured properly.
Josh is tooling the new mortar as it cures.
The ladder was so high that we tried to limit our trips up and down to one a day in order to conserve energy. Meals were sent up from the array of great local restaurants in and around Pack Square.
One of the hardest parts of the job was moving the platforms of scaffolding down as we went. We had to leapfrog the platforms to stay on track with our schedule of chipping out, placing, and curing the mortar. Any disruption in the weather could have meant that we wouldn't have finished on time, but thankfully we had perfect weather and everything went smoothly as planned!
One of the perks was the awesome views of the city and surrounding mountains from the top of the scaffolding.
Working on the Monument for 10 straight days, we saw and heard a lot of interesting and colorful people, events and things. This was a communist rally one afternoon which ended dramatically when the police had to get involved!
We enjoy historical restoration projects and look forward to doing more. It is a special thing for us to be able to connect to the stonemasons of history, and restoration work is probably the closest we'll get to building something of the magnitude of the Vance Monument.
The stone is a beautiful, durable granite, but the work is not for the faint of heart!
Upon we finishing our work at the Vance, we left immediately for Vermont and stonework certifications through The Stone Trust. More on that later, but Josh and I are both level II DSWA and instructor certified, so stay tuned for workshop info, and a blog about our experience in Vermont!
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