Stone Garden Walls. Lebanon PA.
Here we have two stone garden walls located in Palmyra / Campbelltown in Lebanon county. These walls are built with limestone and have a concrete cap. The stone walls separate the sidewalk and the parking lot of a popular resturant. It might be hard to imagine but where these walls stand used to be the front of a multi unit residential building. As part of this renovation project a portion of the building was being converted in to a bar area with outdoor dining. The rest of the building was taken down in order to expand the parking lot.
On the original building the short stone wall in the foreground did not exhist, it used to be a brick wall. The brick wall was demolished down to it’s foundation and the stone wall was built in it’s place. Between the two walls is an opening for people to access the parking lot from the sidewalk. The longer wall to the right of the opening is mostly original. However it used to extend up two stories and it made up the front of the building. So, that section of wall was taken down to it’s current height. Since this wall made up the front of a building there were three door openings that needed to be layed shut with stone.
The best way to accomplish that without it being obvious where the doors used to be is to “tooth out” the door openings. What that means is to take out the small pieces of stone on either end of the door way. So when it gets layed shut you can overlap the stone. Thus breaking up the vertical joint that would have extended from the base of the wall all the way to the cap. Basically outlining exactly where the doors used to be. In my opinion that would have looked terrible. By toothing it out it is basically impossible to be able to tell where the doors used to be.
As I mentioned previously the longer wall used to extend up two stories. When that wall was taken down the stone were saved and those were the stone used to lay the doors closed and to build the short wall. By recycling the stone from the building we were able to create a perfect match. Limestone that have been exposed to the elements for around 50 years or So, develop a patina that lightens them and gives them an almost white apperance. That look cannot be artifically recreated so saving the stone was crucial in order for everything to look the same. This stone masonry project was finished off with an off white mortar join.
