Turning stones into pieces of art for hearth, home

The gas logs were roaring, but no one in the family room was paying attention to the dancing flames.

Everyone was transfixed by the fireplace -- a dry-stack stone work of art that forms a 6-inch-thick, floor-to-ceiling mountainside in Rick and Kathy Perkins' basement retreat.

Sitting on the hearth, also made of natural field stones, was mason Jonathan Burnett -- rock star.

"There's no mortar in nature," he said with a shrug. "It's important to bring nature inside the home. We're living in stressful times and the basement is [Rick's] sanctuary."

Burnett, 35, builds fireplaces, walls, patios and other architectural features out of raw stones. They vary in size, weight, shape, color and composition. They're stacked so that their most weathered sides face forward.

Perkins, a Midlothian dentist, met Burnett, born and raised in Richmond, at Luck Stone in Manakin in fall 2006. Perkins, a builder by hobby, was interested in having a stone fireplace built in the basement of his Huguenot Ridge home.

Just before closing time, he ran into Burnett, Richmond's only certified dry-stack stone mason, who was combing rock bins to find materials for a client's project.

"I wanted a guy who's willing to sign his name when he's finished," Perkins told Luck Stone associates. "Literally, a plaque. They told me, 'It's your lucky day. Jonathan just happens to be here.'"

Burnett, who built the sample boards for the new Charles Luck Stone Center, has become the area's superstar of stone. His work is so in demand -- the wait is about three months -- that he's seeking an apprentice.

His consultation with the Perkins family involved poring over magazine photos, months of talking and hours roaming through the Luck rock yard. "Rick's a perfectionist," Burnett said with a laugh.

So is Burnett, who urges homeowners to clip out pictures, study stones and decide exactly what they like. He educates homeowners but wants the product to be their dream rather than his. "After he taught me the principles of stone," Perkins recalled, "I would go out and see a wall done by a laborer instead of a craftsman and it just doesn't look right."

Once the stones were chosen, Perkins put studs in the fireplace wall. Burnett installed a vapor barrier to keep out moisture. He screwed wall ties into the studs and attached them as he went along to the stones using the structure's only bits of mortar.

What keeps the fireplace from toppling over? Burnett follows traditional masonry principles he learned from his father, Orie, and at a dry-stone conservancy in Kentucky:

The most important -- crucial to the stability and strength of the stone stack -- is breaking joints, vertically and horizontally stacking the rocks so that the openings between them don't line up.

Another vital principle is that a stone doesn't rock when placed atop another. To keep them steady, Burnett takes his carbide-tipped chisel and mason's hammer and takes off just enough rock so that a stone will sit level on the one below.

The edifice leans toward the wall. "The lean-back gives it its strength," Perkins said. "That keeps it from falling on my kids."

Perkins became Burnett's de facto assistant for the 9to 10-day construction when his dental schedule allowed. "It's painfully slow," Burnett said. "I told them they were going to leave for work and come home and think I took a nap."

"He'd spend an hour on just one stone," Perkins said.

Needless to say, Burnett isn't paid by the hour. He can't calculate cost per square foot because each job is unique. He will say that his fireplaces so far have ranged from $5,000, in the Perkinses' range, to $12,000. "The materials can get crazy," he said. "I think I bought almost two tons of stone to do Rick's, which cost about $800."

The results are perfectly imperfect. Each stone in the fireplace has a story.

Numerous rocks are fossilized. One is partially covered with lichen that the Perkinses occasionally spritz with water to keep it alive. Another has a volcanic vent where gases once escaped. A large centerpiece stone over the gas-log insert has a crater-like indentation that seems to have been carved out by swirling creek water.

"A lot of people with brick fireplaces view them as a little industrial," Burnett said. "They said it doesn't suit the inside of their home. It's not handmade or homey -- it's too square and industrial.

"We're trying to mimic nature. We can just use big stones and square it straight up, but wow -- look at the difference" when you let the stones rest in their natural states."

The mantel also tells a story. The Perkinses found a reclaimed piece of wood at E.T. Moore, a vintage timber business in Richmond, that once was part of a Cape Cod warehouse owned by billionaire businessman Warren Buffet. Burnett left a deep pocket in the fireplace where the mantel is anchored to an unseen iron plate.

There are no building codes for stone, Burnett said, but the structure is too heavy for anything but a ground-floor installation in an existing home. In new construction, reinforcements can be built to support the weight of an upper-floor stone fireplace.

The Perkinses are so thrilled with their fireplace, they want Burnett to build a patio and fire pit in their back yard.

"It's the heart of the basement," said Kathy Perkins, staring at the wall of rock from a sprawling sofa. "It's a piece of artwork."

Contact Julie Young at (804) 649-6732 or jyoung@timesdispatch.com.