10 Ways to Smarten up Your Home with Cast Stone

With fluctuations in the housing market, the current trend is to improve your home and not move. Spending has increased for many home projects, including loft conversions, new kitchens and interiors. However, people often forget to invest in the exterior of their property. There are numerous ways to smarten up exteriors, that add character, charm and value to your home and in some cases, without extensive building work. So, if you want to make a statement that lasts, take a look at our top ten finishing touches for homes and gardens to improve your exterior without breaking the bank.

Cast stone is a great material to to work with and it can be more cost effective than quarried stone. It also offers greater flexibility, particularly when restoring original features as it is made in moulds with the fine details finished by hand, this allows the combination of high quality craftsmanship that can be reproduced a number of times to fit your designs. Cast Stone weathers just like carved stone and will blend to match your existing stonework over time, perfect for fixing broken sections, or to blend in an extension with the rest of a period property. Bespoke or off the peg, there are a so many options.

1) Coping

Chilstone make a wide range of copings to finish your wall to your desired design.

A smart home and garden need a quality finish and many people forget about their outside walls. Coping adds a quality finish to the top of garden walls and protects them from the weather. Designed to look smart, the shape of the coping prevents the brick or render from getting soaked during wet weather. Curved or straight, Chilstone have a range of cast stone products to transform your walls from a boring boundary to a smart, upmarket feature.

Our coping can be simple to blend with your garden, but still protect your brickwork.

2) Cast Stone Gate Piers

Chilstone’s Smart Gate Pier Capitals for gates. Available in a range of heights as required. These have been rendered and painted white.

Gate piers are sometimes called gate columns and look impressive hung with beautiful gates to create a distinguished entrance for your property. Cast stone has the flexibility to create the look you want at a more competitive cost. Our hand finished cast stone can replicate existing, damaged stone gate piers with an authentic finish and colour to match the original. Our team can work with your architect, or directly with consumers, to create the design you want, providing free CAD drawings and advice on installation. Our gate piers are available in a number of shaft sections to produce the required height and come in a range of designs.

3) Gate Pier Caps and Finials

To top off your gate piers we recommenced smartly matched Pier Caps.

Making a modern classic with smart Chilstone pier caps on a new build property.

Or, for a more daring look you can opt for high impact, distinctive finials. Some of our clients have created flamboyant or imposing gates with our pier caps and finials that have lasted decades.

Detailed finials with tall gate piers.

Impressive finials with ornate gates.

4) String Course

String course is a decorative feature that really adds an air of quality to a new build or restoration. This simple addition can increase curb appeal and the value of your property. It needs to be incorporated into building plans, but is not expensive. Cast stone offers the flexibility to make string course fit your house perfectly. Teamed here with cast stone window surrounds, this string course really makes a distinctive difference to the exterior to create an impressive new build with a classic design.

Hand finished Chilstone Cast Stone String Course above a Chilstone Window Surround

Close up of Chilstone String Course. This is hand finished to bring out the fine details, giving this new build, character and elegance.

5) Paving

Cast Stone paving can be colour matched to existing slabs and can be engraved with a personal message, memory or house name, they can even be engraved with colourful numbers to make a hopscotch for little ones. Smart and traditional or bespoke for your own ideas! Here’s our paving on a stand at RHS Hampton Court Show.

Chilstone paving engraved with colourful numbers to make a hop-scotch

6) Edging

Our edging makes formal gardens and planted beds extra special, making a smart trim for borders and flowerbeds. Available in straight or rope designs, it adds a charming finishing touch to keep plants in a neat bed, so you can admire the plants in all their glory.

7) Engraved House Signs

Our in-house engraver has created some beautiful house signs, from smart signs with formal lines and silver lettering to spiralling scrolled fonts with simple images on many types of stone, from marble to cast stone and everything else in between. His experience and skill can help you decide what’s right for your home. Just ask our team.

8) Stone Bench

This bench was commissioned via designer Ali Dempster as a wedding gift, engraved with the lyrics from the happy couple’s first dance.

Stone benches have that eternal feel to them, like they have always been there. A special place to stop and admire the flowers and wildlife at the heart of a garden. Cast stone benches weather like quarried stone, with moss and lichen growing on them to make them feel reclaimed by nature. Chilstone benches can be engraved to remember that special moment or someone in stone forever. With many styles from simple straight benches to those with ornate legs for classic garden designs. We even make curved seats for cosy nooks and follies.

9) Staddle Stones

You can’t look at Staddle stones without thinking of period country homes and cottages. Quintessentially English and extremely expensive in reclamation yards and vintage sales. Cast Stone staddle stones weather to look like the originals. The weathering process can be sped up with soot and yoghurt mix or covering your stoneware in autumn leaves. See our Weathering blogs for more ideas.

This outbuilding has original Staddletones, but you could replicate the look. It really is adorable.

Staddlestone are sometimes confused with Pad Stones, we make Padstones too and they do look fantastic on car ports, stables and outbuildings. These need to be planned into your building designs.

Chilstone’s Pad Stones make a feature in car ports

Chilstone’s Pad stones add rural charm to stables

10) Balustrades

Balustrades are for extraordinary homes and buildings. They add a wow factor that really sets a property apart from the crowd. Elegant with effortless class, these can transform a garden or driveway into something really special. Too gorgeous to be kept for stately homes, these can transform homes and gardens of all sizes with the right imagination and a good workman. We can also restore broken or damaged balustrades to give them a new lease of life, matching the new cast stone in with the original stonework.

The famous Golden Staircase at Hever castle was repaired with Chilstone balustrade after a tree fell in a storm and destroyed a section.

For more ideas or bespoke solutions contact our team. With 65 years of handcrafting, we can find a solution perfect for your designs.

We will be back at RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2018 – looking forward to seeing you there!