Thursday, March 11, 2010

A peak into making stone

Ok first I gotta say its not a high fashion job. Maybe not even a low fashion job. LOL I have several layers of clothes on.
And Jr. only has on a t-shirt, these young kids. They are so much stronger than us.
That's Jr filling buckets with LWA.

I didn't realize how we look when we work, I made this apron out of an old pair of overalls. It works but isn't pretty. Plus it was cold today.


We ruff up the bottom of the stones so they will ad hear to the mortar better.



Mollie and Jr. pouring the mix into the molds.

Mollie and Jr. filling the wheel barrow with mix.




Hannah dressed and ready to go to the prom. lol



This job is hard work and dirty work. But we can make a lot of stone in a short amount of time because we have a good system worked out. Every body does what ever is needed and it goes smoothly. See the roller conveyor system in the background? That is a huge help to us.

3 comments:

Captain Hook and Lady Crochet said...

Very cool Debbie! I think my gardening attire matches your stone attire. LOL. Wait til I post pics of us doing our bee thing! I love that you guys do this. How much per stone? WHat kind of orders do you get? Finished stone pic? LOL... Maybe the next post!=0P

Yolanda said...

I am impressed! How did you get into this? Where do you sell your product?

debbieo said...

Yolanda,
I saw it in an entrapanures (sp) magazine, did some research and decided to go for it.
We used to go to trade shows. Now we just put it on pallets close the the hiway. We live on a major hiway, our home is quite a ways back. Anyway there are signs and people see the stone, stop and get the number and look at it and it pretty much sells itself.
We sell it by the pallet and we put 100 square feet on each pallet. We do almost all custom coloring. If we feel like it we make up some standard color stones and sell them from the yard. I like to keep several pallets of these because I get a lot of impulse buys I call them, ones that want the stone today and dont want to order it. So I just make the kind that sells best and it sells.
Oh, I found a greenhouse thing I am going to build on the side of my house, I was just going to put a sun shade but when I saw this I said, there ya go.
check it out.http://home.earthlink.net/~tabletophomestead/greenhouse.html
We have about 16 feet of floor to ceiling windows in the sun room. We have to keep it coverd with that foil stuff cause it gets too hot or cold, I think this will be the bomb. What do you think?