By Cory Sekine-Pettite

Natural thin stone provides the beauty and strength of natural stone for environments where full-dimensional stone might be weight and/or cost prohibitive. The material is the fastest growing product among stone suppliers in the United States. And among many architects and builders, natural thin stone is moving quickly from a niche product used strictly for cost savings or structural considerations to being the preferred facing product for many residential, commercial, industrial and institutional projects. In this article, Building Stone Magazine reviews some case studies where natural thin stone came to the rescue for a variety of interior and exterior building applications.

A Happy Accident
In residential construction, particularly single-family housing, natural thin stone veneer is a popular choice for builders because, once installed, the stone looks just like full-dimensional stone, yet it requires less labor and effort to install. In turn, this saves the builder — and the eventual homeowner — a good deal of money without sacrificing the quality of the building materials or their life expectancy.

For Robert Stillman, a New York-based builder of multi-million-dollar homes, discovering the qualities and ease of use of a particular supplier's natural thin stone was a happy accident. Stillman, owner of Stillman Development Co., was looking for a natural stone supplier last year for a small but exclusive residential development in Fairfield County, Conn. For this particular project, he required a natural thin stone that was a minimum of 14 inches long and six inches in height so that when the pieces went up on the exterior walls of his new homes, they looked like substantial stones — the kind he usually uses when working with thicker natural stone veneers. Through his online searches, Stillman found Connecticut Cut Stone Supplies Inc., of Milford, Conn., which was able to manufacture the stones to his specifications.

According to the manufacturer, natural thin stone is an intelligent way to engineer a residential project because one can save a significant amount of money in construction costs on digging the foundation.

The material also is often easier to work with than full-dimensional stone and can be installed in less time, which is a factor in construction cost savings.

"You still see the same size and scale as regular, traditional four- to six-inch veneer, but you get five times the coverage," said Tyra Dellacroce, general manager of Connecticut Cut Stone. "Where normal veneer might cover about 30 square feet in a ton, a ton of ThinStone™ [the company's brand of natural thin stone] will cover about 140 square feet."

"It was a really great experience," said Stillman, who was using natural thin stone for the first time. "From the outward appearance, you cannot tell that it is not a four-inch- or five-inch-thick veneer, because it is real stone.

Colors and Textures
Multi-million-dollar homes are not the only projects where natural thin stone is being implemented today. Technology has made the production and affordability of natural stone veneers an option for homes and other projects on many budget levels. According to Natural Stone Veneers International Inc. (NSVI), a family-run stone supplier in Fond du Lac, Wis., diamond saws, robots and computer technology now contribute to the quarrying and fabrication of thin, lightweight slices of natural stone. What's more, the company said, scraps and rubble — once considered unusable waste — can be cut down and used as well, thanks to the technologies at hand.

Further, typically no additional structure supports are needed when a thin stone veneer is applied, since the size and weight is usually specified within building code limits. Thin veneers, unlike conventional full veneer stone products, do not require ledgers, footings or ties as part of installation, NSVI said. And in an industry where time is money, this fact makes natural thin veneers an increasingly popular choice.

It could be argued that nowhere is this truer than with commercial/retail construction projects. Joe Buechel, one of the five family members who run NSVI, said that for large commercial projects, natural thin stone is becoming the standard wall material. "With the technique and installation methods in which thin veneer is [placed], you'll see more of it because it is a better fit for commercial projects. ... It's more affordable."

In fact, many builders that incorporate natural thin stone into their commercial developments are able to mix it up with several different varieties of stone to produce unique and aesthetically appealing structures. Thus, NSVI offers 55 different varieties of thin stone veneer. "What sells in New York City is different from Florida or the Midwest or L.A., so you've got to have colors and textures," Buechel said.

One large project in particular, he recalled, used six or seven different types of NSVI's thin stone, including its Concord, Virginia Ledgestone, Sydney, Lakewood, Kingston and Olympia stones. The mixture of thin stone materials for the Grand Plaza shopping mall in Southern California visually divides the various storefronts for this outdoor mall, while at the same time producing a cohesive facility that looks as though it could have been carved right out of a mountain. The developers certainly couldn't have afforded such a design using full-dimensional products, yet the end result provides the same visual appeal. "Again, it is all about color and texture. ... What better wall covering could you have than natural stone," Buechel said.