Damaged marble threshold
The saddle in our main entryway appears to be marble (this is a typical BK brownstone). A part on the edge is chipped and is now crumbling, with small white sandy piles around it. Is there an inexpensive way to fix this? Does the whole saddle need to be replaced?
kachuri999
in General Discussion 3 years ago
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justinromeu26 | 3 years ago
i would guess that the other stones can be cut with a carbide blade as well bob its just how much cutting can you do before you kill the blade. perhaps cut an end off and that’s it, the blade is useless. even marble i am sure will ruin a carbide blade, we might just get a little more cutting out of it (btw, i ruined the worm gear in a saw using a wood blade on steel once, a long time ago, before carbide blades had become popular with consumers).
if someone is planning in installing their own saddle and wishes to trim or even form one (bevels and all), all they would need is a diamond blade and a stone grinding wheel ( i suppose these are like $50 each, i bought the ones i have over a decade ago) and a polishing set (amazon, like $50, maybe less. of course an angle grinder for all of this; every homeowner should have one – and now dewalt has battery operated ones – great to grab to cut something quick around the house) and anyone can do this stuff – cut, form chamfer’s and bevels and even a full hollywood and polish it off to a fine finish.
when we get call s to fix saddles that others have installed too high, to where they are hitting the door, we polish them down on site. messy yes, but it works. anyone on this board can do it.
installing a saddle in an interior door way is a little different than doing a wide one in an entry way. first, when carrying 56″ wide stone, it has to be carried on edge like glass. if someone carries it flat, it may crack under its own weight. also laying it flat in the back of a vehicle with an uneven surface can crack it if one hits a bump.
in so far as the substrate on the entry of a house. sometimes when we remove old saddles we find wood, sometimes stone or brick. either way, there is usually a pretty well busted up mortar bed under the old stone. that stuff has to come out. if it is a 4″ deep trough, fill it with mortar and then use thinset. with tiles we do not do this (i would not do tiles work anyway; i mean the industry) but I pressing the saddle down into it until the thinset oozes out the sides and i clean it off, leaving the thin set as grout. they have white thinset and grey.
when setting wide saddles, they must be laid down carefully and slid into place with uniform support across the length of it -its not a matter of stand it up and then lay it down in place, its lay it down inside on edge, lay it over flat and slide it in place.
anybody on this board can do this –
RobertGMarvin
in General Discussion 3 years ago
FWIW I had a new marble saddle installed at the entrance to my ground floor half bath about 25 years ago; it’s held up well. Unlike other stone marble can, I think, be cut with woodworking tools.
justinromeu26 | 3 years ago
And it is better not to cut the edges too tight. We are dealing with old, imperfect things. If you have grinder, you can play around trying to do this tight if if you go too tight you can always take an end down a little, with the right wheel. I leave about 3/16″ on each end and fill that with thinset as if it were grout.
Back to the slope i mention above, if for some reason you feel you must slope it a lot to the outside, like 1/8″ or more, which not only will interfere with the sweep but could kick the inside of the saddle up too much to the inside, above the floor, you can have them slope it down a little along the inside edge, 3 inches or so about 1/4″ down. They call it a hollywood. It is easy for the stone shop to do.
I know most people don’t like to read all this crap here, but it sure helps my business.
justinromeu26 | 3 years ago
The stone and thinset alone will cost almost 200 now. And yes, this can cost less as part of a larger project. I USED to try to do them at 500 as part of a door job. A little more stand alone. The running around to measure/order takes time. This is for something like 54″ wide x 7″ deep. 5/4″ or so thick.
Do not set them up too close to the door. You do not want water sitting too close to the wood. 1/16″ is too close. The water will bead high enough that the wood will wick it up. That is how these doors decay. A slight outward slope with a dark rubber/vinyl sweep capped with a like wood to dress it up will look the part and keep moisture out. Only a very slight slope or the sweep will rip apart as it runs over the saddle.
Now this: everyone contemplating this must be aware of this: most saddles are cut wide to the inside of the door. Some people have the vestibule floors redone and the rocket scientists laying the saddle and tile line the saddle up close with the inside edge of the door. When we go to remove the old slide bolts set in the door edge or reinforce them and add new heavy duty bolts on the inside face of the door, this leaves no saddle there to close the bolt into. If the tile floor is close enough we can secure the door by going into it but what we really need is a full 2″ of stone inside. In my door service company, we do it the old fashioned way and not only bring it in 2 or more inches but we return it back behind the casement on the inside.
This is easy work.
cate | 3 years ago
A stone/mason person could do this. Especially if this is for the exterior front door, it’s very important to make a template and cut the edges to closely fit so you don’t get air infiltration. We used real marble instead of engineered stone when we did it. Whole thing was only about $200 (as part of a much larger job).
justinromeu26 | 3 years ago
maybe in the summer, me. it is hard for me to schedule little projects that far out and often if we take a name and number for something really small like this and call in two months, we find that people have moved on and found someone else.
someone on here might have a stone guy. if you can find a talented handyperson , i will write something on here with all the pitfalls to watch out for and tell you how to make a template to cut that stone (we don’t make a template, we measure and draw) and where to get the stone and what to tell those stone cutters where you buy the stone and how to handle that stone. this is easy stuff though frightening the first time you do it. if you raise it up as you set it, door height could be an issue and trimming doors in situ is an issue without the proper plunge saw. i would hate to have to see a homeowner remove doors for something like this.
my website is www.thetinkerswagon.com. if you write to me i can pretty much give you a price but i cannot do something like this now.
kachuri999 | 3 years ago
I don’t think I have the skill to replace this myself. Any rec’s for who can handle this?
justinromeu26 | 3 years ago
If this is something you wish to do yourself, come back on here and say so. I have done scores of these and can give you detailed, lenghty instructions.
justinromeu26 | 3 years ago
This is steve. I commented above under doorsby
It is original marble. It is time to replace it. That is the best advice i can offer. Use quartz or caesarstone if you do.
I am not marketing myself here.
Guest User | 3 years ago
Nemo tile has been able to identify old stone for us to match. Pedro at Andes Marble 347-546-6813 has been able to supply when Nemo could not
ceci | 3 years ago
Do yourself a favor , replace it!!! Same thing happened to me, when we removed it; there were other areas in saddle that were crumbling!!!!
kachuri999 | 3 years ago
Thanks! Here’s a photo that shows more detail. [DFCDB440-8A69-4EEA-B605-4BD41CEA6239](//muut.com/u/brownstoner/s3/:brownstoner:Uaws:dfcdb4408a694eeab6054bd41cea6239.jpeg.jpg)
andriywww1990 | 3 years ago
i just thought of something. if you have an actual crack in that marble and it is decaying along that crack, the epoxy is not going to hold too well. epoxy does not work on stone the same way it works on wood where we can glue it and bend it and stress it like they do running boats over waves. that is because the stone itself, especially marble, is not that strong. the epoxy may be strong, but the marble is NOT as strong as the epoxy and it will fail along the glue line (the marble will fail). if you have a crack and the substrate is stable, you might get away with a repair. but most of these crack because of movement underneath, the house has shifted and the mortar bed has decayed. when new saddles go down, a new mortar bed goes down as well.
if you have a chip, you will have better luck. but what you are saying indicates to me that something else might be going on and i stand over these saddles every time i do a pair of doors.
the owner of the tinkers wagon is about to become a NYS Licensed Home Inspector.
andriywww1990 | 3 years ago
if it is original it is probably marble. being a softer stone, once these begin to decay this way, it seems they powder and crumble easy but it may not be crumbling all the way through. if this was a small spot, there are epoxies on the market to repair these. Amazon sells them. they even have them with dye kits or you can probably buy some tint from the paint store and put that in to color it – even a tad of yellow or brown – just a tad – to color it off and make it look aged.
i replace these as well. when i replace them i use quartz or ceasarstone. i do believe it is much stronger and more resilient to foot traffic. if you send me a photo via my website www.tinkerswagon.com, i can give you a price to replace.
We are door restoration people but we do door repairs, lock installations, and repairs of things around doors – frames and thresholds. sometimes glass but that is usually part of a bigger job.
The owner of The Tinker’s Wagon will soon be a NYS Licensed Home Inspector. Let your friends know. if people think i go into too much detail when i write on here, wait until they listen to me talk as i inspect a home – they will need a stenographer to keep up with me.