Lets Clear the Slate (or Make It Actually)

A few years ago while building a new sheep pasture I kept hitting slabs of slate with the bulldozer, and always one to enjoy rocks; if they looked nice enough, I would push them off to the side so I could do something with them at a latter time. Well last summer I was on a Maine Geological Survey website and found a list of active and inactive quarries in Maine and did a search for ones in my town. I guess it should not have surprised me that just 2 miles down the road was a slate quarry.

I don't have a lot of time to spare in my life right now by beating a steel chisel on an even harder rock, but with nothing more than a chisel and 2 pound hammer, I did manage to split enough of our own slate to make our foyer floor. It was not easy and I almost gave up, even looking at slate at some of the big box stores, but it was hideous. It had too many iron ore pockets in it for my taste. So I went back to work at splitting more of our rock, and managed to make enough for our floor. It came out well I think though our home is a timber frame so the rock works well in that respect.

It was nice to work with another material other than wood for once though. That is because whenever possible I try to use the materials we have on this farm to make our life better here, but you can be the judge if it worked in this case.

(BTW: There is radiant tubes underneath to help with snow melt and heating that part of our home)

Very nice looking floor, congratulations. Bet it's nice to walk in the door, kick off your shoes after a long day, and let the heat just soak up into your legs. That was my impression the first time I felt radiant floors.

Real nice NS. It takes work to come up with something that comes out lookin that good my friend:)

Double the satisfaction knowing you quarried the stone yourself. I have been amazed at the size of the hearthstones in some of the old colonial houses.

Thanks for the kind words everyone, and yes it is nice to know where the rock came from. If you look close at the center of the photo you can see how two pieces mirror each other since they were hewn from the same shaped rock.

In some ways the cement around the slate comes from the farm as well. I don't have limestone here so I had to buy the cement in bags, but we got a small gravel pit, only a few acres in size, but of good enough quality, though rarely do we let contractors go in and use it.

This fall a friend at work was late getting in his firewood and I just happened to have some left over from last year so I said he could have it (he only burns 4 cord per year). He is one of those guys that cannot take something for nothing so as a trade he gave me his cement mixer. Its old, not big, but works great and the first project in using it was mixing up the concrete for this project.

If I get the chance I plan to rebuild the cement mixer from the ground up and get some paint on it. It works but the wheels are busted, its rusted up, the belt is loose and the shield over the electric motor is loose. Just some simple repairs and it should have a new lease on life.

Very nice! I don't remember the town, but it was off the beaten path in the middle of Nebraska. Maybe McCook, I'm not sure. Just north of town there was a livestock auction. I always stopped there on auction days. Nice parking & the restaurant inside was great, plus I liked to watch the auctioneers work. Anyway, at the front entrance the floor was local field stone. Rough cut, so it held puddles after hosing it off, which they had to do about every hour. You can imagine how rough it was treated with hundreds of people there, almost all of them working with the cattle as either sellers, buyers, truckers or staff. The floor was beautiful & it wore like a rock.

For some reason those two big pieces you mentioned make think of Gateway computers.