We can all admit that this DIY stone veneer fireplace update completely transformed our living room and gave it some much needed warmth. That said, I want to issue a warning: this is not a super easy weekend DIY. The whole time I was working on it, I kept saying “I need to make sure that people realize this wasn’t a cheap or quick or easy update.” It was much more of a process than I expected.
If you aren’t doing a mantel or you’re only adding stone to the bottom portion of your fireplace, maybe it wouldn’t be too bad. The mantel equation really caused some headaches, but I’ll get to that later.
So one more time so that it’s not missed: Your hands will be extremely sore. Your house will be very dusty. Your garage will be covered in mucky water from the tile saw. Your brain will hurt from trying to figure out how to “best” lay everything out.
With that warning out of the way, let’s dive in and start DIYing a stone fireplace!
This post contains affiliate links for your convenience (which means if you make a purchase after clicking a link, I earn a teeny-tiny commission, but it won’t cost you a penny more)! Click here to read our full disclosure.
How to Install Stone Veneer to a Fireplace
Recommended Tools:
- Jigsaw with metal cutting blades
- Drill
- Drill attachment for mortar/grout
- Tile cutting wet saw with a diamond blade
- Hammer
- Plastic buckets for mixing mortar and grout (we went through several)
- Measuring Tape (new to DIY? Be sure to check out this post with measuring tips)
- Safety Equipment
Shopping List:
- ½” cement board
- 1 ⅝” self-tapping for cement board screws
- Ceramic tile mastic
- Construction adhesive
- Mesh self-adhesive cement board tape
- Large tile and stone thinset mortar (we went through 4 50lb bags)
- ½ x ½ x ½ square notch trowel
- Tile trowel
- Tile and grout brush (recommended, but not required)
- Grout bag
- Grout (we mixed together a bag of eggshell and a bag of biscuit)
- Caulk that matches your grout color
We already had the tools, but a new diamond blade and all of the extra materials to install the stone added up to $545, with about $175 of that being for the cement board and related materials. Note: we do have a Lowe’s card, so we get 5% off on every order.
STEP 1: ORDER YOUR STONE
After mulling over which material to use and ordering samples for 7 months, I finally decided on Masonmade Stone’s Kansas Limestone Thin Veneer in Birchwood. (P.S. that is NOT an affiliate link. I don’t make any commission if you order this stone or anything from them).
The stone is absolutely beautiful and the customer service was really great. That said, it’s not like Lowe’s where I give you a link, you order, and you’re all set.
Here’s a breakdown of the process, and I’ll be sharing my costs. Please remember: every business is welcome to change their rates over time, so just because they quoted me one price doesn’t guarantee you’ll get the same price (especially if you’re reading this in 5 years). I’m just sharing to give you a rough estimate because this is not a cheap DIY.
Price for Stone Veneer
To order the stone, you’ll submit a customer inquiry form. They’ll need to know what stone you’re looking at and how much you’ll need. You’ll need to know both the overall square footage and how many linear feet you need for the corners. Don’t forget to include some overage (generally add 10-15%).
For our fireplace, we ordered 19 LF for our 9’ ceilings. We only ended up with one extra cornerstone. We ordered 70sqft of stone for the rest and ended up with a LOT of scrap because the corner pieces cover a chunk of square footage as well. I appreciated having a lot of stone options, but it was definitely a lot of work to move all of the excess stone from the garage to the living room and then back to the garage. Overall, the actual square footage of our fireplace was 60. After seeing the price of shipping, you’ll understand why we decided it was better to err on the side of ordering more.
Overall, I was impressed with the pricing of the stone itself. It was cheaper than a lot of fancy tiles! It was $14.75/sqft for the veneer and $18/sqft for the corner pieces, making the cost of the stone for this project $1,374.
But considering that the stone is so heavy, the freight costs aren’t cheap. Still, I was SHOCKED when I saw the price…$982 for shipping.
There was also a small order fee of $169 and sales tax, making the final price of the stone $2,634.
All-in, this stone fireplace cost us $3,179. Is that more or less than you expected?
Shipping Process
If you’re still wanting to order the same stone (I don’t blame you, it’s gorgeous), let me tell you about the shipping process. Overall it was super quick, but it was a bit stressful.
They send you the shipping information and then you have to call to schedule the actual delivery. You’ll likely get several calls the day of with updates on the time of delivery because you have to be there to inspect and sign for it.
The technical rule is that they will drop the stone at the curb and they will not move it from the curve. They recommend having your contractor on site to handle the delivery.
Given that we didn’t have a contractor, this fell on me. As the day came closer, I started to get more stressed about how we were going to move all of the stone from the curb. It’s really heavy, so you can really only move a couple of pieces at a time by hand and our driveway is really long.
Luckily when the day came, the delivery driver asked me where I wanted it. I asked if he could place it in the back of our garage and he did! Praise the Lord!!
I can’t guarantee that you’ll luck out with your delivery driver, so be sure to have a backup plan.
Masonmade does share a delivery checklist with you, so you’ll have all of the information at your fingertips!
STEP 2: DEMO
As I’ve mentioned, the stone veneer is still pretty heavy, so you need to make sure that your fireplace can handle the weight of it. Regular drywall is not going to work here (this article explains why).
Instead, you first need to strip the fireplace down to the studs and then replace the drywall with cement board. As you’re removing the drywall, be careful. There might be wires or plumbing behind the walls, so you don’t want to go full force with a sledge hammer and cause a bigger issue!
Once you get the drywall pulled off (we used the back side of a hammer and occasionally a crowbar), you’ll need to remove any screws that might still be in the studs. Also, the corners of drywall generally have these metal strips on them, so you’ll likely need to use a crowbar or back of a hammer to pry those off separately.
OPTIONAL STEP 3: ADD EXTRA SUPPORTS
Since we opened up the wall, we decided to take advantage of this by adding some new boards to make it easier to hang our TV and mantel.
We used glue and pocket holes to secure some 2×8 pieces between the studs at the general height that we wanted to place the TV. We also swapped out the regular outlet that was there with this flat screen TV kit.
I always felt like our mantel was WAY too high before, so we checked the local building code to see if we could lower it. I wasn’t sure exactly how much lower I wanted it, so we glued and screwed a few more 2x4s beneath the existing 2×4 stretcher that the old mantel was secured to. This would give us some flexibility to figure out the exact placement later.
Before you close everything up, take a photo and add in measurements so that you know where all of the studs are later.
STEP 4: ADD CEMENT BOARD
Now it’s time to put up the cement board. When working with the cement board (especially when cutting), be sure to wear a mask to protect your lungs and safety glasses to protect your eyes.
To cut the ½” cement board, we like to use a metal cutting blade on the jigsaw. The blades dull pretty quickly, but we prefer this method to the scoring/snapping method. If you need to cut out around an outlet, you can drill holes in the corners of the area you want to cut out and then use the jigsaw like you would on a piece of plywood.
To hang the cement board, we used a mix of construction adhesive and 1 5/8” self-tapping cement board screws.
Once it’s all hung up, we need to fill the seams and corners using mesh cement board tape. Cut it to size and stick it over the seams. Then we applied ceramic tile mastic to cover up the tape and fill the gaps (that’s what they had at the store next to the tape).
Once we got everything taped up, we added in mounting blocks from scrap 2x4s and 2x8s for our TV and mantel.
If you are adding a mantel, we recommend that you hang it now. Yes, you will have to be careful with the mantel and tape it up when applying your mortar, but we think it would be much easier to install and get a truly built-in look. We talk a bit more about this in step 8.
STEP 4: LAYOUT THE STONE VENEER
I spent way too much time on this step. I spent 5 hours over the course of two days rearranging every stone to get the perfect fit and to minimize cuts. It sounds like a good plan in theory, but what I didn’t take into account was the fact that the corner pieces weren’t actually going to be perfectly on the corners.
Because the veneer is heavy, you put a lot of mortar on the stones, causing them to stick out a little bit from the wall. Because the corner pieces wrap around the corner, they ended up being about ½” shorter than I had planned for, which messed up my whole plan because the middle pieces were about 1” too short.
I was able to salvage a decent amount of it, but I did have to move things around as we went on. I was going for minimal grout lines, so having the pieces fit together well was important for me. If you are a fan of larger grout lines, it’s much easier because you don’t have to be so anal about how perfectly the pieces all fit together!
I measured all of the details of the fireplace, including things like the mantel and light switches, taped it out on a tarp and then I laid out my design on that. I still recommend doing this, but you don’t have to be as meticulous as I was.
I still highly recommend mapping out your general design prior to making any cuts or mixing mortar – at least the most visible sections like around the fireplace box. Pre-planning it (even if it’s not perfect), will at least help you ensure you don’t have too many small pieces in one section or an awkward block of all large pieces.
For the sides of the fireplace, I didn’t map it all out meticulously and it worked out great. Rather than trying to make an exact plan of the entire thing, I broke it into a few different sections. First was the bottom section where I mapped out about 8 stones. Then I planned out the next section of 5-10 stones before adding mortar. Repeat until you’re at the top.
When we got to the sides, we knew we would have to cut the majority of the stones anyways, so it was less of a focus on finding a piece that was the perfect fit and more of finding the “close enough” stone and then cutting it to fit what we really needed.
As you’re planning things out, try a mix of large and small pieces. You don’t necessarily want to do like every other piece is big and then small. It should feel random. Surprisingly, making it feel random took a lot more brain power to figure out!
STEP 5: INSTALL THE STONE VENEER
You’ll first install the corner pieces and then you’ll go back and install the rest of the stone veneer, working from the bottom of the fireplace up.
Before placing the first stone, put a tile spacer or piece of cardboard underneath the first piece so that it’s not sitting directly on your floor.
Installing the stone veneer will consist of several steps that you might do in various orders throughout the project. Those steps are broken down below and are mixing the mortar, cutting the stones, and hanging the stone veneer.
How to install stone veneer on a fireplace
Mixing Mortar
For this project, we used Large Tile and Stone Mortar. To mix it, we followed the instructions on the back of the bag. I know, I know – you want a tutorial, but the thing is, it’s best to follow the instructions on the bag.
I’ll give you a couple of notes. When mixing the mortar, consistency is key. Think of a creamy peanut butter. It spreads easily, but it doesn’t easily fall off the spoon. Too dry and your stones won’t be secure to the wall. Too wet and runny and the mortar won’t be strong enough to hold the stones up.
When mixing the mortar, you don’t want to mix too much at once, or it will start to dry out in the bucket. Yes, placing a towel or lid over the bucket when you aren’t actively applying the mortar is helpful, but still, it’s a race against the clock to get the stones up before the mortar starts to dry.
We would plan out a decent sized section (at least 5-10 stones depending on size) before mixing any mortar. During this planning stage, we would also make any cuts that were necessary for the section.
With the stones being both thick, yet delicate, cutting the stones is definitely a time consuming process, especially when you have to walk back and forth to the garage for each cut too!
Hanging Stones
To hang the stones, you’ll first want to spray the back of the stone with some water. This will help prevent the stone veneer from sucking all of the moisture out of the mortar, causing it to dry too quickly.
After spraying, slap a thick coat (~½”) of mortar on the back of the stone veneer and spread it so that it’s even across the back. Then take your ½” notched trowel and run it along the mortar at a 45-degree angle to create grooves in the mortar.
Place your stone veneer on the wall and then press it firmly into place. I found it helpful to apply pressure into the stone and then jiggle it slightly up and down a few times. I also made a fist with my hand and hit it several times to ensure it was really on there.
You should have enough mortar on your stone veneer that a little bit squeezes out the sides when you install it. You can wipe off the excess if it’s going to get in the way of placing the next stone or if it oozed out high enough to interfere with the grouting.
As I mentioned earlier, you’ll start at the bottom and work your way up. This will help with your stones stay up and in place. If you do notice that your stones are sliding down a lot, your mortar is likely too runny or it might be dry.
Between each stone, we do want there to be at least a little gap so that you have somewhere to add the grout. We used cardboard as spacers between the stones to help keep them positioned how we wanted them as the mortar dried.
Cutting Stones
Our stone veneer was just barely thin enough to be able to cut it with the same wet saw that we’ve used on all of our past tiling projects. You can cut this stone veneer just like you would cut other types of tile on a wet saw.
The difference is what happens after you cut the stone veneer. The stone veneer varies in thickness, so you might have a thicker piece next to a thinner piece, making the edge of the thicker stone slightly visible.
To make it look natural and not like it was clearly cut, we hit the edges of the freshly cut stone with the back of a hammer to chisel it off and create a natural-looking edge. You don’t have to do this with the entire edge, just the area that is closest to the front of the stone and most likely to be visible.
If you accidentally break a stone that you still want to use, we found that super glue worked well enough to hold it back together so that we could put the mortar on as one piece.
Placing Stone Veneer Over The Fireplace
Ideally we want our mortar to be thick enough that the stones don’t fall down the wall when we put them up, but too dry and the mortar will dry too quickly, leaving the stones susceptible to falling off the wall. It’s a fine balance, so to give the stones over the fireplace a little extra support while they dry, we used some scrap 2x4s to hold them up.
There’s nothing fancy about our structure and you don’t need to make one exactly like ours, but I will tell you what we did. First, we measured the height and width of the fireplace box.
Then we cut (2) 2x4s to the same height and (1) 2×4 to the width. We lined up the legs with the top of the horizontal 2×4 and secured them together using a few 2.5” wood screws.
Then we just stood the structure up on the floor in front of the fireplace and got to stoning.
Working Around an Outlet or Lightswitch
When we were planning out what to do with the fireplace, one of the things that really tripped me up was what to do with the stone around a lightswitch. You definitely don’t want there to be big gaps behind the plate, so sitting on top of the stone isn’t really a great option. Filling the gaps with grout or caulk seemed messy too.
Here’s what we landed on and I am thrilled with the result. As we were planning out the stone layout, we left the light switch cover on and designed the layout for the stones to work around the light switch cover. We spent a lot of time trying to make sure the stones were as close to the light switch cover as possible during installation.
So after installing the cement board and before the mortar, you’ll want to install an electrical box extender to bump out the lightswitch so that it’s sticking out enough with the stone.
When it was time to grout, we filled the whole blank spot with grout so that it was flush with the electrical box extender.
When it was dry, we installed the cover and the switch looks great. We did have to chisel out some of the corners where I went to high with the grout, so watch out for that! When looking at the fireplace straight on, you can hardly even see it.
STEP 6: GROUT THE STONE VENEER FIREPLACE
Now that all of the stones are up, you want to let the mortar dry for at least 48 hours before adding your grout. This is a great time to wipe off all of your stones with a wet sponge as well. They have a LOT of dust on them when they arrive.
Once the 48 hours have passed, it’s time to grout! Our store had very little color options, so we can had to mix two colors together: 1 bag of eggshell and 1 bag of biscuit.
If you are mixing two colors together, it’s imperative that you mix the dry mix together BEFORE adding water. We mixed the two bags together completely in a bucket first and then used a second bucket to actually mix the grout.
For our grouting, we did not want to overgrout. This is just regular grouting.
Mixing the Grout
Like the mortar, you’ll want to follow the instructions on the back of the bag to mix it together. Also like the mortar, you don’t want to mix too much at once. If you work too slowly, it will dry up in the bag, so once it’s ready, get right to piping and don’t stop until you’re finished or out of grout!
Apply the Grout
Cut off the tip of a piping bag – start smaller because you can always go back and cut more off if enough grout isn’t coming out.
Add the grout to the piping bag, pushing it down so that there aren’t big pockets of air. Squeeze it down like you do with that last bit of the toothpaste tube and then twist the top so that it doesn’t squeeze out the back.
Pipe it into the cracks. We piped enough so that it mostly sat flush or right below the surface of the stones.
If you get any grout in your stones at this stage, don’t try to wipe it off! It’ll just smear and will stay on the stone. Wait 10-30 minutes and then brush your stones with a tile brush or some sort of stiff bristle brush.
Smooth the Grout
Let the grout sit for 10-30 minutes. The timing will really depend on the consistency of your grout. You want it to be setting, but not hard or difficult to press.
Run your finger along the grout lines to smooth it out. If needed, you can dip your finger in some water to help smooth things out better.
STEP 7: CAULK
In the aisle with the grout, you should see some color-matched caulk tubes as well. Pick up the caulk that matches your grout. Since we mixed ours together, we opted for eggshell caulk since that’s closer to the ceiling color.
Add a piece of tape to your ceiling where the stone veneer meets the ceiling. Add a bead of caulk between the top stones and the ceiling and smooth it out. Carefully remove the tape.
Our gaps up top were very small (less than ¼”), so we opted to just use caulk along the top. If your gaps are larger, you can use grout instead or fill the majority with grout and then finish the top with a clean caulk line.
STEP 8: ADDING THE MANTEL
We will go into details on how to install the mantel in the DIY mantel blog post, but I wanted to add this here to talk a little bit about our mantel installation so you can consider if you would prefer to put it up before or after.
Really, we wanted to install the mantel before adding the stone veneer, but I was undecided on our mantel and was too much of an eager beaver to wait to put up the stone.
If we were to do it again, I think I would opt to install the mantel first and then install the stone around it. This would give you a better idea of how exactly you need to cut the stone. Yes, we drew a line of where the mantel would go, but without the actual mantel in place, it was easy to say “oh that’s close enough” and that little itty bitty excess would cause us issues down the road. We ended up having to chisel a few stones and some excess mortar to get the mantel to fit correctly.
The other thing to consider is that if you install the mantel after the fact, there is very little room for error on the sizing. Too small and you’ll end up with huge grout lines around it. Too big and you’re going to have to jigsaw out around the stone to make it sit even somewhat flat.
Ours ended up being a hair too large in a few spots, so here’s what we did. First, we chiseled out the stone where we could to get the top to be able to slide in a bit further.
Then we made the sides longer than the top/bottom pieces. This way the sides would be able to slide in fully next to the stones to minimize the grouting there. We tested it a few ways, and it definitely seemed like having the sides go all the way to the wall was definitely the best looking.
Because it was slightly too large, we did have to jigsaw out the top corner of the side pieces to match the stones so that it would be able to slide in as planned.
There you have it! Now you know how to turn your builder-grade fireplace into a stone veneer fireplace! I feel I owe it to you to remind you that this is not an easy project: your hands will be tired, your house will be dusty and messy, and you’ll be exhausted. Worth it? I think so. Will I do stonework again? I think not.
We ended up replacing our bulky old TV with a knock-off Frame TV. I never thought I would be a Frame TV person – they always felt like a gimmick to me – but I am SO happy with it. It sits so flush with the fireplace, which gives our mantel more room. It also doesn’t detract from the fireplace because we can display beautiful artwork on it as well! We got it on sale and I would 100% recommend the upgrade, especially if you just spent all this time making your fireplace such a showstopper!
Since we finished it around the holidays, I couldn’t resist sharing how cozy and magical it looks with all the holiday decor as well!
