FAÇADE SERVICES · DECORATIVE STONE
Decorative stone repair: patching, pinning and replacement
We save the carved stone that can be saved, and cut replacements to match the pieces beside them.
Decorative stone repair keeps the carved and molded stone on your façade sound: sills, lintels, band courses, keystones and ornament. Banu fits the repair to the damage. A small loss takes a composite patch, and a cracked piece gets stainless steel pins set in epoxy. Where the damage runs deep, we let in a dutchman, a new piece of matching stone set into the old. When a unit is past saving, we cut a new one to the original profile. Your QEWI gets a record of each piece.
What we deliver
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The lightest repair that lasts.
We choose patch, pin, dutchman or replacement piece by piece, and you see the reasoning before we start.
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A match that's hard to spot from the sidewalk.
We tint repair mortars against test samples on the wall, and source new stone for color, grain and finish.
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Stone that stays on the wall.
We re-anchor loose pieces with stainless steel before anything is closed up.
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Access at the ornament.
We rig the drops at the sills, lintels and ornament ourselves, under our own Special Rigger license.
Services and capabilities
01 Survey
- A hands-on survey of each decorative unit, sounded for hollow and loose pieces
- Probes at the anchors and the backup masonry behind the stone
- Samples and test patches for color and texture
02 Repair
- Composite patches for spalls and lost profiles
- Stainless pins set in epoxy across cracked and detached pieces
- Dutchmen cut from matching stone
- Re-anchoring with stainless anchors
- New units cut to the original profile
- Repointing the joints around each piece (masonry restoration)
03 Close out
- Photos keyed to your FISP report
- The records LPC needs to sign off on landmarked buildings (landmark restoration)
- A maintenance note for each elevation
Signs your stone needs work
- Cracks running through sills, lintels or carved bands
- Pieces that sound hollow when tapped or shift under your hand
- Spalled faces and lost edges on molded profiles
- Old patches that have cracked, discolored or let go
- Rust stains running from a joint, usually a corroding anchor behind it
- Netting or a shed over ornament after a FISP inspection
Questions about decorative stone
Should cracked stone be patched or replaced?
That comes down to how deep the damage goes and whether the piece is still anchored. A shallow spall takes a composite patch. A crack through an otherwise sound piece can be pinned. Deep damage, or a piece that could come off the wall, calls for a dutchman or a new unit, and either one will outlast a patch. We walk you through what we found on each piece and the repair we recommend for it.
How do you match old stone?
We take samples, mix test patches and judge them against the wall in daylight before the full repair starts. For dutchmen and new units we source the same type of stone, matched for color and grain, and dress it to the same finish. On landmarked buildings, LPC reviews the samples.
Will the patch fall off again?
Patches usually fail because they're stronger than the stone around them, too thin, or laid over a loose surface. We cut back to sound stone and use repair mortars made to work with that stone. Where a patch has to build up depth, we set small stainless armatures inside it.
Do we need LPC approval?
If your building is an individual landmark or sits in a historic district, LPC regulates most visible stone work. Your architect files the application, and we supply the samples, mockups and method statements that go with it.
Let's talk about your building
Send us photos of the stone
We'll go through it piece by piece and tell you what we can patch or pin, and what needs new stone.
