A job takes longer to draw than to build.

That surprises people, and it is the single most useful thing to know before commissioning stone work. The survey, the drawings and the schedule take three to five months on a building of any size. The masonry, once it starts, is predictable to the week.

Everything below is what happens in that time, in order, and what it costs you at each stage.

Sheet 09 · the sequence

Seven stages

01 Look

One of us comes and looks, from the ground and from a ladder where it is safe. Free, anywhere within two hours of the yard. You get an opinion in writing within the week, and sometimes that opinion is that the building does not need us yet.

02 Measure

Scaffold or a tower, and every elevation measured properly. Profiles come off in lead tape, mortar samples go to a lab, and every stone that concerns us is photographed and numbered.

03 Draw

Elevations at 1:50, details at 1:5 and full size for anything moulded or carved. These are the drawings the masons work from and the ones you keep. Charged at cost, and deducted from the job if it proceeds.

04 Schedule and price

Every stone listed with its condition, our proposal and its cost. Forty pages is normal. It is written so you can put it out to another mason and get a price for identical work, which is the only way a comparison means anything.

05 Cut

Blocks are ordered, seasoned, sawn and worked at the banker. You are welcome in the yard while it happens, and we would rather you came than did not - a stone approved on the bench is never argued about on the wall.

06 Set

On site, in lime, in the right weather. We stop below five degrees and we do not force a programme through a frost. A job pushed through November is a job pointed twice.

07 Hand back

Scaffold down, a walk round with you and the architect, and the archive: drawings, the schedule as built, mortar mixes, photographs and the templates. Kept here as well, for the life of the building.

What it costs, and when

Nobody likes this part, so here it is first

Stone work is expensive and slow, and a practice that is vague about that at the start is a practice that will be vague about it later. These are the real figures for an ordinary listed facade.

Stage	When	Typical cost
Look	Week 1	Nothing
Measure and draw	Months 1 to 3	4 to 7% of the works
Schedule and price	Month 3	Included with the drawings
Cut	Months 4 to 7	Staged against stones completed
Set	Months 6 to 9	Monthly, on valuation
Hand back	Month 9	5% retained for twelve months

Retention is normal and we do not argue about it. What we do not do is front-load a programme so that the money is drawn before the stone is cut.

A floor plan with phases of work hatched and numbered

Who else is usually in the room

On a listed building there is an architect, a conservation officer, and often a grant body. We are used to all three and we write for them: our schedule is in the format the grant application needs, because otherwise somebody has to retype it and that somebody is usually you.

Listed building consentWe prepare the drawings and the justification; you or the architect submit
Conservation officerMet on site before the schedule is finished, not after
Grant bodiesSchedules formatted for the application, and the photographs they ask for
Insurance workWe will deal with a loss adjuster directly if you would rather not

Asked at nearly every first meeting

How long before you could start?

Six to nine months for the masonry, because the drawing and the scheduling come first and because the yard is booked. If somebody can start next month they have not measured your building.

Can you match the stone exactly?

Usually. Where the original quarry is worked out we find the closest geological match, put a sample on the building, and get it agreed in writing before anything is cut.

Will the repair show?

At first, yes, and it should. New stone is lighter than weathered stone and takes ten to fifteen years to catch up. Anyone offering an invisible repair on day one is proposing to stain it.

Do we need scaffold for the survey?

For anything above the first floor, yes. It is the single biggest cost we cannot avoid, so where there is a tower or a cherry picker that will reach, we use that instead.

What happens if you find something worse underneath?

We stop, photograph it, and tell you the same day with a revised figure. It happens on about one job in four, and it is the reason a schedule has a contingency rather than a surprise.

Start with the looking. It costs nothing.

A photograph and a postcode is enough to begin with.

Request a survey

Metro Stonewright

Stonemasons and lime specialists. Founded 1968. Six banker masons, two carvers, one yard, and no subcontracted stone.

On the Historic England approved list
Every job photographed and archivedDrawings and a written schedule go to the client, not just an invoice

METRO STONEWRIGHT LTD · THE YARD, BRUNSWICK PLACE · ALL WORK TO BS 7913 AND THE SPAB APPROACH