From Russia With Love (& some WWII history)
Well, technically, Russian speaking Vladimir and Valarie are from Belarus, a former republic in the USSR which is now independent. Vladimir and Valerie are recent immigrants from Minsk which is the capital of Belarus. Their skill is only matched by their desire to do work correctly.
I have heard of problems with water infiltration into stone but these guys were very diligent to do all the flashing correctly. They were clean and their joints are admittedly much neater than the ones I did on our fireplace and the interior arch this winter.
If people ask me the difference, I will have to have an excuse, I mean reason, why my joints are not as neat…can anyone help me out with a plausible reason?
I am very proud to have immigrants work on our house since they are legal, insured and pay taxes. They work for Ystone, a company owned by another Belarusian immigrant, Yury Horbach. The stone is Dutch Quality brand, supplied by P. F. Cook in Cranberry.
When we use cultured stone, it is a challenge to make it look like natural stone. One of the ways we do this is to use natural sandstone for the mantels, caps and pier caps. Another way to make the stone look natural is to apply applications on the house that make sense, and to use mass when natural stone would have had mass.
We were very careful to make the front porch arches very thick, as they would be if constructed of natural stone. On a personal note, one late addition to the plans was the little arch on the side of the porch. This arch was created for my oldest grandchild, Nadia, to sit in when she visits and waits for me to arrive home. My other grandchildren, well, I will make some curved steps to the porch for them. We will pour the steps and have pictures of them soon (although not soon enough for Deby!)
Back to Vladimir and Valerie, as a student of history, I had to ask them if they had relatives with remembrances of WWII. Given the horrific casualty rates of the Russian people in that war, they did not have a lot of relatives who had experiences that they could relay to them. But Vladimir did note that one of his aunts lived in Kursk, a few hundred miles to the south east of Minsk. Kursk was the site of the largest tank battle in the history of the world in the summer of 1943. The Germans were trying to regain the offensive that they had lost the previous winter in Stalingrad. Vladimir related that she said the skies were filled with planes from both sides and the tank battles were enormous and thunderous. It was a brutal defeat for the Germans and they never launched a major offensive attack again until The Battle of the Bulge, which is when my father went to the front in late 1944.
Thanks for following, more to come!
David Bachman