Solid Rock Masonry LLC builds custom stone homes across Duluth and northern Minnesota. Owner Eric Moshier is a third-generation mason, a Certified Heater Mason, an ASTM E1602 committee member and an MHA Technical Committee member, with more than 25 years and 800 completed projects behind him. We build custom stone homes two ways. Where the design and budget allow, we lay full-bed stone on structural backup. Where they do not, we lay properly detailed thin stone veneer. We work in granite ashlar ledgestone, granite fieldstone, split fieldstone, limestone, taconite and bluestone. Either way, the wall drains, dries and lasts in a freeze-thaw climate. The lake home shown throughout this page took seven months and covers close to everything stone can do on a house: granite ashlar on the exterior, limestone through the interior, and a hand-laid brick groin vault over the spirits room. We serve Duluth, MN the North Shore, and northern Minnesota and Wisconsin, and we travel for the right project. Every custom stone home we quote is priced individually, once we have seen the site, the plans and the stone.
What does Solid Rock Masonry build in stone?
We build the stone parts of a house and we build them to outlive the house. That work covers full stone and brick exteriors, chimneys, stone pillars and entries, interior feature walls, fireplaces, wainscot, kitchen hoods, stone floors, patios and retaining walls.
Some clients want one wall done right. Others hand us a set of plans and a stone allowance, and we spend the better part of a year on site building a full custom stone home. Both are welcome. We work in full-bed stone and thin stone veneer alike, and we will tell you honestly which one fits your house, your structure and your budget.
Start with our stone fireplaces page if your project is a fireplace or a chimney. See exterior veneers if the stone is going on an existing house. Head to restoration if you have failing stone or brick that needs to be put right.
Full-bed stone or thin stone veneer: which is right for your custom stone home?
Two honest ways exist to put stone on a house, and we build both. Full-bed stone is full-thickness stone that carries its own weight on a footing or a properly detailed shelf angle. Thin stone veneer is a lighter cut, roughly an inch thick, that bonds to the wall. Each has a place. What decides whether a wall lasts is not the system you pick. It is whether the crew detailed it correctly.
Full-bed is our preference, and where the structure and budget allow it is what we recommend. It moves with the building, it carries its own load, and a mason can repoint it in fifty years instead of tearing it off. Full-bed also costs more, often 15 to 20 percent, and it demands a foundation built to take the weight. Not every house is designed for it.
Thin stone veneer answers the design or budget that rules out full-bed: a wall with no footing or shelf angle to carry full-thickness stone, a structure that was never engineered for the load, or a lighter building. Done correctly, veneer performs. We lay it regularly on custom stone homes, and we stand behind it.
Everyone has seen the same failure: stone popping off a wall five years in. That does not come from thin veneer itself. It comes from any stone, thin or full-bed, installed with no drainage plane and no flashing. Water gets behind every cladding; that is physics, not a defect. A wall with a drainage cavity, a water-resistive barrier, through-wall flashing at every interruption and open weeps sheds that water and dries out. A manufactured (fake concrete stone that has been painted to look like stone) and or real thin stone that has no drainage system traps the water, freezes, and pushes the stone off. That second wall is the one clients call us to rebuild, and it is the only kind we refuse to build.
What is ashlar ledgestone with a drystack joint?
Ashlar means squared stone, roughly rectangular units laid in courses, rather than round fieldstone fitted like a puzzle. Ledgestone means roughly squared stone, with thinner pieces mixed in here and there, all laid tight and abutted in a linear, stacked pattern.
A drystack joint is the finish. We lay the stone in full mortar beds like any structural masonry, then rakes the joints back deep and keeps the mortar off the face. The joints stay very tight, a quarter inch or less. From three feet away the wall reads as if the stones simply stack on each other with nothing between them.
This finish is harder than it looks, and much harder than a struck joint. With so little mortar in the joint, there is nowhere to hide a stone that does not fit. Every stone has to be picked, and cut with a stone hammer or saw with a diamond blade on it when necessary. So its face lands where it belongs and sits tight against its neighbors. On the lake home, granite ashlar ledgestone in a drystack joint wraps most of the exterior, and getting each stone to fit was as much of the job as laying it.
A custom stone home on a northern Minnesota lake
This house sits on rock above a large northern Minnesota lake, and it took us seven months. That number surprises people, so it is worth explaining where the time goes.
Granite in an ashlar ledgestone pattern with a drystack joint wraps the walls, the pillars, the chimneys and the pool surround. Limestone runs through much of the interior. Both stones came from Orijin Stone out of the Twin Cities, and the granite is a Wolfeboro.
Selecting and cutting stone for a drystack face runs slow. Setting a pillars that has to line up with a roofline three stories above it runs slower. Laying a brick groin vault runs slowest of all. Rush any of it and the mistake shows, permanently, in the finished wall.
How do you build a brick groin vault?
The spirits room carries a brick groin vault over it. A groin vault forms where two barrel vaults cross at right angles: four curved surfaces meet along diagonal arrises, all of it in compression, all of it holding itself up.
We build it over temporary arch formwork cut to the exact curve of each vault, then lay the brick on top course by course, aiming every joint at the center of the arc. The bricks near the crown want to fall. They stay put because the arch closes and each one squeezes its neighbors.
Once the mortar cures, the arch forms come out and the vault stands on its own. That moment is the truth of this kind of work, and no one can test it early.
This is medieval technology. Almost nobody builds one anymore, because almost nobody has to. We built this vault because the client wanted a room that felt like a cellar under a European house, and no drywall version of that exists.
What does the interior stonework involve?
Interior stone is not a lighter version of exterior stone. It is a different discipline, because the client now sits inches away and studies this wall every day for thirty years, in good light, from a chair.
Interior work on this house ran to limestone walls and floors, a limestone entry, stone in the dining room, a stone bar and entertainment area, and granite ledgestone through the living spaces. Plenty of that stone had to tie cleanly into cabinetry, glass, steel and timber that other trades had already set.
That coordination is most of the difficulty. Stone does not forgive a dimension that changed after the fact.
What makes stonework last in a Minnesota climate?
Freeze-thaw. That is the whole answer, and everything we do follows from it.
Water enters a wall, freezes, and expands roughly nine percent. On the North Shore it does this dozens of times a winter. Any wall that traps water eventually comes apart, stone by stone. So the wall has to shed water, drain what gets in, and dry out.
Good detailing means a real drainage plane, through-wall flashing over every opening and at every base, weeps that open and stay open, and mortar matched to the stone. Mortar must always stay softer than the unit it holds. Harden the mortar past the stone and the stone spalls, because the joint stops being the sacrificial part.
The footing matters just as much. Under our stonework we spec 4,500 psi concrete or better, 8 inches deep, with 1/2-inch rebar at 12 inches on center. Stone is heavy and unforgiving. A footing that settles takes the wall with it, and no one repairs that. They rebuild it.
What goes wrong when stonework is done badly?
We spend a real share of our year fixing other people’s stonework, so none of this is theoretical.
The failures repeat. Veneer with no drainage cavity delaminates. Poorly constructed concrete chimney caps instead of fabricated copper or steel chimney crowns with proper caulk and flashing around chimney pipes. Missing or reverse-lapped flashing steers water into the wall instead of out of it. Weeps that nobody installed, or somebody packed solid with mortar, give the water no exit. Portland-rich mortar on soft stone destroys the stone and leaves the joints standing proud. Steel lintels with no protection rust, expand, and jack the masonry above them apart. Every one of those is a design and installation failure, not a material failure. The stone did nothing wrong.
Our approach to a failing wall matches our approach to a new one: find the actual cause and correct it. We fix the issue, not just put a bandaid on it like other contractors. Repointing a wall whose flashing is missing only decorates it. The wall looks better and fails again on the same schedule. Our restoration page covers how we diagnose and rebuild failing stone and brick if you want the long version.
What stone do you use, and where does it come from?
It depends on the house. We work regularly in granite, basalt, limestone, taconite, split fieldstone, bluestone and brick, and we have laid Montana ledgestone, lots of granite cobblestone and soapstone.
On the lake home, the granite and the limestone both came from Orijin Stone in the Twin Cities. We keep long relationships with regional suppliers and quarries, and we will tell you honestly when a stone you have picked is a bad idea for the application, and we say so before it lands on a pallet in your driveway rather than after. For the wider standards behind good stone selection and installation, the Natural Stone Institute is a solid reference.
For exterior work in this climate, our local stone genuinely is better. Northern Minnesota granite and taconite are extremely dense with very low moisture absorption, so they shrug off freeze-thaw winter after winter, which is exactly why these hard stones are what nature left here. Limestone and other softer, more absorptive stones are not native to the region, so we bring those in when a project calls for them, usually for interior work where freeze-thaw never comes into play. Match the stone to where it lives, and for a wall that faces our weather, native granite, basalt and taconite are hard to beat.
How long does a custom stone home take, and what does it cost?
Time depends entirely on scope. A fireplace runs a few days. Feature walls run a few weeks. Once you reach a full custom stone home with interior stonework, the schedule runs months. This one ran seven.
We quote cost per project, after we have seen the plans, the site and the stone. We do not publish a square-foot number for custom stone homes, because the honest range runs so wide it would be useless to you. Instead we tell you exactly what we are doing and what it costs, in writing, before you commit. Our pricing stays transparent on our estimates and contracts. If your project is further than an hour away from Duluth MN we will add on a travel charge per day.
Access matters more than people expect. Stone is heavy, and a house on a rock face above a lake is a different job from the same house on a flat lot with a driveway.
Where does Solid Rock Masonry work?
Our stonework and restoration centers on Duluth, and we range routinely across the North Shore, northern Minnesota, and northern Wisconsin, including Two Harbors, Silver Bay, Castle Danger, Ely, Hayward, Cable, Minong and Superior.
We travel further for the right project, as we did for the custom stone home on this page. Our masonry heater work runs nationwide, and our Swedish kakelugn and kachelofen builds ship and install across the country.
The gallery is the fastest way to see more of what we have built. Contact us when you are ready to talk.
Frequently asked questions
Should I use full-bed stone or thin stone veneer?
Both work when the crew details them correctly. Full-bed stone carries its own weight, moves with the building and can be repointed rather than replaced; it costs more, often 15 to 20 percent, and needs a foundation built for the load. Thin stone veneer weighs less, costs less, and answers the house whose design or budget rules out full-bed. What fails is not veneer itself but any stone installed with no drainage cavity or flashing. We build custom stone homes both ways, detailed to drain and dry.
Can you put real stone on an existing house?
Usually yes, but it is a structural question before it is an aesthetic one. Full-bed stone needs a footing or a properly engineered shelf angle to carry its weight. Where the structure will not take that load, thin stone veneer is the path, and either way the wall needs a drainage cavity and flashing to survive. We look at the foundation first. See our exterior veneers page.
What is a drystack joint?
Stone laid in full mortar beds, with the joints raked back deep and the mortar kept off the face, so the wall reads as if someone stacked it dry. It is a finish, not a construction method. Nothing we build actually goes up without mortar.
How long does stonework take to cure before winter?
Mortar needs protection from freezing until it gains strength, and in this region that shapes the entire schedule. We tent and heat when we have to, and we tell you plainly when the calendar has run too late to start.
Do you build fireplaces and chimneys as part of a custom stone home?
Yes, and often the fireplace is the reason the client called. We also build masonry heaters, a different appliance entirely: a radiant heat storage system that you fire for 2 to 3 hours and that releases heat over 12 to 24 hours.
Who supplies your stone?
We work with regional suppliers and quarries. The granite and limestone on the lake home came from Orijin Stone in the Twin Cities. The right supplier depends on the stone and the project.
Do you do the stone floors and countertops too?
We handle stone floors, hearths, cut-stone kitchen hoods, wainscot and caps. Fabricated countertops usually fall to a separate trade, and we coordinate with them.
How far will you travel?
Stonework and restoration generally stays within about an hour and a half of Duluth. We go further for larger projects, and the custom stone home on this page sits well north of that. Masonry heater work runs nationwide.
By Eric Moshier – Certified Heater Mason, Third-Generation Mason, MHA Technical Committee Member, ASTM E1602 Masonry Heater Group Member