How to Build an Indoor Rock Wall

so you've got a comfy cozy wood stove, but now what do you put behind it? can't necessarily use dry wall, unless you like your house on fire. you could keep the cement board on, even though it's ugly as sin. why not put a rock wall in?

this Instructable will show you step by step how to put up a rock wall and make your house a home, all for under 50 bucks (if the cement board is already up).

you will need the following materials for a 8 x 12 wall

6 80 pounds of Type S Mortar Stucco Mix
4 pounds of 3 inch decking screws
30 one inch by five inch metal tie downs
150 or more rocks (see step one for specifics)
a five gallon bucket
a trowel (we found a flat drywall trowel worked best)
plastic sheeting (to put on the floor)
water

we're lucky enough to have a stream running through our property, so all we did was jump down into the stream and grab a bunch of flat rocks.

here are the keys for good rocks for a rock wall

flat (no bumps greater than an inch larger than the rest of the rock)
thin (no thicker than 2 inches)
relatively small (rocks should be at most one foot by one foot large, they are hard to put up when they are larger than this.

how many rocks will you need?
that depends on the size of the wall you are attempting. ours was 8x12 and we got approximately 150 rocks of varying sizes.

for our rock wall we needed six 80 pound bags of Sakrete Mortar/stucco type S mix

you will need High Strength!! do not attempt this project with medium strength or anything other than the high strength stuff, we tried it with medium strength and the stuff does not work well.

you will also need a five gallon bucket for the mixing of the mortar.

before you get going on your rock wall you will need to make sure that everything is good to go behind it. keep in mind that it is very hard to fix anything behind a rock wall...very hard.

we took down the cement board which was up prior to putting up the rock wall, it was a good thing we did, we found that there was a 3x4 section of wall that had no insulation at all. we put in some insulation and cleaned everything up behind it.

for this step you will need the following materials

three to four pounds of 3 inch decking screws
30 one inch by five inch metal tie downs (hardware stores have these, they might be called something else. they are wavy in appearance with three holes and are easily bent)
cement Board (if you don't already have it up)

-after cleaning out behind the wall put up the rhino board by cutting it to fit and screw it into the wall with decking screws.
-screw in the metal tie downs at every stud with at least two screws
-bend the metal tie down the slightest bit so that the mortar will be able to hug around the back and front of it.

your going to want to lay down some sort of plastic sheeting or old sheet underneath where you will be doing your rock wall, it will get messy and it will be good to have something underneath it to catch all the extra mortar that falls off the rocks.

make sure that the rocks have had time (1-2 weeks) to dry off from being in the water and for the dirt on them to dry. then take a metal brush to each rock and scrub all the excess moss/dirt/spider webs off.

make sure you have all your rocks right next to your work area organized into different piles. we set up ours in four different piles. one for super small rocks (under three square inches) one for small rocks (between 3-8 square inches), one for medium rocks (between 12-20 square inches), one for extra large rocks (anything larger).

i should have said at the beginning that you should be knowledgeble of the game tetris when attempting this project, because you will need to fit rocks in to very odd places to do this.

1. mix up mortar in five gallon bucket.
-fill bucket about half way full with dry mortar then slowly add water while mixing till you reach the desired consistency. it should be somewhat hard to mix and have no dry parts to it at all. the mixture should lump up nicely on your trowel but slip off the trowel without too much help when held at an angle.
2. align dry rocks on wall the way you want them to go without much more than two-three inches between rocks.
3. butter the side of the rock to face the wall (see picture for example) don't bother buttering the wall i tried that at first but it didn't help much, in fact it didn't help at all.
4. when placing buttered rock on the wall make sure you press very hard and give it the slightest wiggle making sure you keep the pressure on the rock for upwards of 15-20 seconds.
5. when the rock is on the wall use the mortar to put an inch of extra mortar on top of the rock and make sure the line of mortar is even for the next row to go on.
6. when you are done the first row wait around 6-10 hours to start on the next row. we did two rows a day one right after breakfast and the other right after dinner.

extra notes...
-the mortar mixture might get a little dry during the process just add a little bit of water and mix it in.
-make sure you wipe off wet mortar off of the front side of the rocks with a wet towel, otherwise it will be wicked hard to clean up when you're all done.

it will take a while to get the desired result. it took us a little under two weeks to do our wall and we also took a couple nights off toward the end because we didn't feel like working.

you can see an example of a finished row waiting to dry in the picture here

when you are finished go through rock by rock and clean. we used a vinegar solution of 1/2 vinegar and 1/2 water to clean rocks, others may use bleach.

now just sit back and enjoy your rock wall.