When building a masonry brick or thin stone veneer one of the areas that needs to be thought out are the electrical outlets and the outside lighting. When an exterior light mounts to the house behind the light is usually a block of wood commonly called a “light block”. Seems fitting enough. So what do we do when building a thin stone veneer in Massachusetts? First get a coffee from Dunkins. Of course. For our visual learners there are photos!
This piece of stone is from a 4″ veneer rock. I marked it out and cut it down to an 11″ x 11″ square. This stone light block is for a thin stone veneer application. If you wanted to do a full veneer application which is full thickness dimensional stone, simply spend more time with the drill and plunge cut with the grinder and pick away at it with a chisel. Eventually you can get through the 4″ or 6″ veneer stone.
Once we have the shape we move onto rocking the edges. Rocking the edges gives the stone a more natural appearance versus a perfect cut edge. It is safer to do this now when it is 4″ thick to avoid it breaking.
After the stone is rock faced you need a 14″ blade to do the next part. I cut the thickness down to 2″ off the face of the stone.
Now its a thin stone. Ta Da! For more on what is a thin stone.
Center the electrical box and trace it 1/4″ larger.
Trace it on both sides with the grinder wheel then drill as many holes as you can using a masonry drill bit with a hammer drill. Drill them straight down into the stone, then at steep angles into the other cores. If you traced the backside with the grinder at the right location (its sometimes just luck) the back of the stone will pop when the drill goes through but will be isolated to the inside of the box location.
After some effort the box will fit nice and neat.
From working the stone I kept getting a feeling that it wasn’t square. I checked it with a framing square, but must have missed it somehow. From reviewing the pictures you can see one side is not right. The little sliver sitting there is all it took. About a 1/4″ or so.
If you made it this far, thanks for reading, shoot me an email if you have any questions 🙂
