The Dallas Morning News Cheryl Hall Column: Stonework Made Simple

Apr. 11--Bob Schlegel wants to turn Americans into do-it-yourself stonemasons. Home Depot Inc. wants to help.

The founder of Dallas-based Pavestone Co., known for paving and landscaping stones, has teamed up with the nation's largest home improvement retailer to offer do-it-yourselfers a way to transform their brick or wood homes into faux-stone Alamos or castles.

Call it siding for the New Millennium.

Pavestone calls it Veneerstone: pumice that's ground up, molded in a cement mixture and pigmented to look like natural stone or river rock. It weighs 75 percent less than the real thing, doesn't need extra structural support and can be applied over existing surfaces using commonly available mortars.

Veneerstone retails for $33 for 5 square feet. A typical front-door entry -- not too elaborate -- would cost about $100, plus about $50 for installation materials. This type of lightweight manufactured stone has been around for decades, primarily used for multifamily and commercial projects. The industry leader is Cultured Stone Corp. in Napa Valley, owned by Owens Corning.

Pavestone got into the business a year ago when it purchased Tejas Textured Stone in Plano. The 57-year-old Mr. Schlegel says consumers are ready for Veneerstone.

"We think there's a pretty good do-it-yourself market," says Mr. Schlegel, from his corporate offices on LBJ Freeway.

"It's about seven pounds a square foot compared to real concrete that can be 50 pounds a square foot. You don't have to be a professional mason to do it. We give instructions."

Last month, 127 Home Depots in Texas, including all 58 here, began offering Veneerstone in a variety of shapes and colors.

Do-it-yourselfers probably won't tackle an entire exterior, says Mr. Schlegel, who doesn't consider himself a handyman but swears he can install this stuff. But they can use Veneerstone to create an impressive doorway, build a backyard patio, enhance a bathtub, add dimension to a vaulted room or set up a homey fireplace.

Personally, I find the concept hard to fathom, since I recently mutilated my baby finger with a rubber mallet putting together Elfa from the Container Store.

But Hank Crosby, Southwest regional merchandising manager of Home Depot's hard lines, says it passes his installation muster. "Anyone with some hands-on experience should do just fine.

"Pavestone has updated the look from the old brick-type products to a modern stone look," Mr. Crosby says. "I see this as a great way to really upgrade kitchens, fireplaces, etc."

Weight advantage

John "Buzz" Owen, a partner at BGO Architects Inc. in Dallas, has been designing multifamily projects using Tejas Stone made in Plano for nearly 10 years.

"The product can be used in a lot of areas where traditional masonry won't work, such as chimney caps," Mr. Owen says. "In years past, we've done them in siding or stucco. We were never able to do them in brick because the wood structure wouldn't support the weight."

He's never had a developer or contractor complain about the quality of the product or an instance where the material fell off. And because it's lightweight, Mr. Owen doesn't have to design extra support for the exterior walls.

"If it's a large building, you're talking about several hundred or even thousands of square feet of foundation that is not required," he says.

This year, the Tejas Stone unit will do about $30 million in sales -- 95 percent of that to builders and contractors, Mr. Schlegel says. Three years from now, he expects this business to generate $100 million in revenue, with retail accounting for about a third.

Until now, Pavestone has been a prisoner of the landscaping seasons.

"Eighty percent of our sales are March to August," Mr. Schlegel says. "That's the only time we make money. It's like farming. From August to March, we build inventory like crazy. Then, in a perfect world, from March to August we sell it all and have no inventory left over."

Family business

Since 2000, Pavestone has nearly tripled its manufacturing capacity, spending more than $130 million on infrastructure. That crimped profits in recent years but positioned the company to achieve a 50 percent increase in revenue by 2009.

Mr. Schlegel can do this because he still owns the company he founded in 1980 and doesn't have to answer to shareholders.

Mr. Schlegel and his wife, Myrna, are well-known among Dallas' rich and famous. Their daughter Kimberly's wedding in 2005 -- at the Meyerson Symphony Center for 2,000 guests -- became an instant Texas legend. Their manse has an indoor basketball court.

But it hasn't always been an easy road.

During the first six years of Pavestone's meager existence, the Schlegels lived in their native Canada and drove to Texas every other week.

The couple would load up their four kids and the dog into the family van on Fridays for the 22-hour haul from a Toronto suburb to Plano.

He'd spend the next week at his struggling paving-stone company and then return 1,500 miles to several companies he had going in Canada. But when their eldest child missed 80 days of her third-grade year, the Schlegels decided to put down permanent roots here.

Stone plants

Pavestone now operates 16 landscape stone plants and 17 rock bagging locations. The company owns a pumice mountain in California, a red lava mountain in Santa Fe, N.M., and a marble quarry in Colorado.

Pavestone's management team got the idea of veneer stone three years ago, but it took a while to find a company to buy. The deal came about by happenstance, Mr. Schlegel recalls.

"I was driving up in Frisco one day and saw this empty pallet that said 'Tejas Texas Stone' on it and thought, 'That sounds a lot like what we're looking for.' It turned out to be a Plano company, so it's right in our own back yard."

But the raw materials aren't. Pumice -- mined mountain lava -- comes from Greece or New Mexico. And transporting rock is costly, no matter how lightweight it is.

"The lava is worth about $10 a ton in New Mexico and costs $70 a ton to truck here," Mr. Schlegel says.

"We built a plant outside Houston. So now it's actually cheaper to buy it from Greece and ship it there. It's worth $60 a ton when lands in Houston vs. $80 when gets it here from Santa Fe."

Plants in Orlando, Fla., and Sacramento, Calif., will open in the next few months.

Mr. Schlegel points to a Pavestone sales chart that roars from $10 million in 1994 to $425 million projected for 2007.

"If we can get this same trend line with Veneerstone, it'll be kinda fun."

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Copyright (c) 2007, The Dallas Morning News

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