Use stone paste to add beauty to your home
Perhaps this feeling of timelessness is exuded from the rocks themselves. Building with materials as old as nature makes a home seem as though it were part of the story of the land. Besides, stone paste can outlast any other kind of finishing done on the house.
Patrick Yiga, an operations manager at live painters, says stone pastes are well ground tinted stones of a specific gauge. They are used for final finishing which provides a rough but good looking and exotic texture.
Yiga explains that the choice of the stones and gauge is solely based on customer’s choice. However, before applying stone paste, colour blending is the primary step. This is because any colour miss match may isolate the pasted area from the rest of the finishing and this definitely affects the beauty of the stone paste. So the colours of your stone pastes should be based on the previous finishing or what you would like to put in future.
Blending colours
“…the beauty of stone paste is in the colours chosen. Normally we choose two or three colours but, still this depends on many factors such as; customer’s choice, the surrounding finishes and the colours themselves. Some colours cannot come out well when tinted.
So, choose as many colours as you wish but make sure they blend in well together,” he advises. Yiga adds that stone paste is measured by gauge and it comes in two millimetres or three millimetres. There are also a number of colours including black and white, among others.
Here you have to know how many colours are needed and the ratios (where you have to choose your dominant colour).
Yiga notes that: “…after considering all the above, then we come to application. Before the stones themselves, we apply either a gum or paste base. These are responsible for holding the stones firmly on the wall or pole,” he says.
Hire a professional
Yiga cautions on hiring a professional to do the work. After sticking the stones, glaze is then applied. The glaze is a milky liquid which looses colour after drying and this causes the stones to shine. It also adds strength and makes the stones stick together longer.
Yiga says stone paste is applicable anywhere on the building as long it is what the customer wants. However, normally they are used on poles and columns, beams and for exterior wall finishes.
