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Creating a Decorative Fireplace With Stone Veneer This Holiday Season

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Creating a Decorative Fireplace With Stone Veneer This Holiday Season

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‘Tis the season when your home becomes the focal point for holiday gatherings. There isn’t a better centerpiece than your fireplace for making memories with family and friends. But is your fireplace looking a little drab? Give it a makeover with stone veneers.

The look of a natural stacked-stone fireplace adds charm to any space, and it’s easy to do. Thin stone veneers can be adhered around an existing fireplace made of brick or tile. The industry term is a “fireplace surround,” because that’s exactly what it does to give your fireplace a new look.

 

Installing a Thin Stone Veneer Fireplace Surround

Like the name sounds, a fireplace surround includes all the elements surrounding the firebox itself, which includes the area inserted into the wall where the fire lit. Thin stone veneers can be installed around the firebox and up to the mantel area or all the way up the ceiling to give the look of a natural stone chimney.

Cultured Stone Echo Ridge Country Ledgestone

Thin stone veneers are natural or manufactured stones usually about 1-2” thick that can be attached over an existing brick fireplace. Because thin veneers are lighter in weight, they are faster and easier to install than building a new stone fireplace, saving you time and labor costs. Not to mention not having to take on a messy demo project in your home before the holidays. Not only will you achieve the look of a full stone fireplace, you’ll have the same durability and low-maintenance care.

If you’re handy around the house, you could DIY your fireplace surround. Puzzle lovers will enjoy the process of putting the pieces together in place. If you’re unsure of your DIY skills or you’re in a time crunch to get it done before a holiday party, it will be easier and faster to contract a professional mason or contractor.

Stone Veneers for Your Fireplace Surround Makeover

Dress Up Your Stone Fireplace for the Holidays

Once you have your new stone veneer fireplace done, you’ll want to dress it up with some holiday cheer.

Cultured Stone® Chardonnay Dressed Fieldstone

Start With Greenery

A big staple for your fireplace decorating is the lush greenery. Place garland across the mantel and perhaps drape down the sides of the firebox area (be sure to keep all décor from getting too close to the fire and heat.). Within the garland, the possibilities are endless to nestle fairy lights, figurines, ornaments, fruit such as cranberries, flowers such as poinsettias, pinecones and more. Perhaps, hide an Elf or two. 

Pangaea® New England Quarry Ledgestone

Color Coordinate

Pick a color theme and coordinate your holiday décor. It could be traditional Christmas colors of red and green, more frosted wintery shades of blue, white and silver or even something offbeat such as pink. If you put up a Christmas tree, you can match your fireplace décor with your tree décor by using bauble, ornament, ribbons and candles in matching colors.

Interloc New England

Match Your Décor Style

Is your style ultra modern, vintage/retro or farmhouse? Make your holiday décor match your design style in your home, or give it a style all its own. Modern style may use sleek ornaments, metallics and high-contrasting colors, while farmhouse leans to soft neutrals or all-white with black trim. Mid-century modern has become very popular, with more of this type of décor hitting the market in playful colors of pink, teal and orange.

Once the stone veneer is set and garland is hung, all of us at Instone wish you a joyful season by the fire with loved ones. 

Ready to dress up your fireplace with stone veneer? Make your wish list and contact us for samples of Pangaea, Cultured Stone and Dutch Quality stone veneers. 

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Summer is the Perfect Time for a Pizza Party with the ISO’ven

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Summer is the Perfect Time for a Pizza Party with the ISO’ven

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Pizza recipes, cooking tips and more
from our resident pizza experts!

Give your outdoor kitchen a fun upgrade – just in time for outdoor summer parties.  If you want a knockout addition to your back patio space for entertaining friends and family, an outdoor pizza oven is the perfect choice! Here’s what you should know about having a pizza oven:

The Difference is In the Taste

Isokern, the maker of high-end fireplaces, offers the ISO’ven Outdoor Wood Burning Oven, for making pizza and other dishes over a wood burning flame. What makes cooking in the ISO’ven different from your regular indoor oven is the taste.

“The wood-flamed cooking experience is outstanding,” says Instone’s President and CEO, Kevin Grotke, who uses his ISO’ven on a regular basis. “We cook pizzas and do cooking in cast iron skillets to finish off dishes such as macaroni and cheese, lasagna, roast, bullion sauces and red sauces. The richness of flavor from the wood cooking is amazing and so unique. You can make the kind of pizza you would get at a high-end pizzeria in your own backyard.”

The Entertainment Value Alone is Worth It

An outdoor wood-burning pizza oven creates an entire experience for you and your guests.

“It’s a really fun appliance to have,” says Grotke. “It’s a whole event to build the fire, keep the fire going, managing the heat, making the pizza, turning the pizza in the oven while it cooks.”

Not only does the experience set an outdoor oven apart from an indoor oven, but the pizzas cook very quickly – about four minutes when the oven is up to full heat, which is between 750 and 900 degrees as opposed to a conventional indoor oven that maxes out at 500 degrees. 

Building the fire and getting it up to full heat is a ritual in itself, which takes about an hour. It’s the perfect time for a pre-meal happy hour!

Because the fire is in the back of the oven, turning the pizza to cook it evenly becomes an interactive activity that adds to the fun. Since the pizza cooks quickly, guests can make their own individual pizzas and have them ready at about the same time. That’s definitely a pizza party in the making!

Easy Installation

Grotke says the ISO’ven is relatively easy to install because it comes in components. “A medium-skilled DIYer could do it themselves in a couple of hours. Then you would add the stone veneers or whatever finish for the look you want.” He says outdoor cooking and entertaining has definitely become more popular over the last few years. A pizza oven in your backyard can provide a fun focal point for your next party.

 Wood Burn or Gas Starter – Your Choice

While the ISO’ven is intended to burn solid wood fuel, a gas starter is also available. We recommend using cherry, applewood or hickory wood for added flavor.

How to Make a Great Pizza

Our resident pizza expert at Instone, CIO Jim Palatine, offered some tips and recipes for making a great pizza. He says he got into making pizza when he saw a shop that made beautiful granite slabs and decided to have a pizza stone made for himself and to give away to friends. He started experimenting with making pizzas at home and trying recipes from what he refers to as the ultimate pizza recipe book: “The Pizza Bible: The World’s Favorite Pizza Styles.”

He shares some of his best pizza making tips:

The Key to Great Pizza Crust

“The difference between run-of-the-mill pizza and extraordinary pizza comes down to the dough,” says Palatine. “You really want dough that’s been fermented for three days in the refrigerator.  You can make it with any recipe or buy it frozen. Just make sure it is pizza dough, not bread dough. Then put it in the refrigerator and cover it with a film wrap and let it sit for three days. That will give you a really nice elastic texture and it’s easier to make a nice round pizza crust that will have a nice chewy and nutty taste to it. It’s a real game changer.”

Typically, dough is sold in one-pound balls.  Cut the ball in half and make two smaller half-pound balls.  Separate them on a plate dusted with flour, and loosely cover with a plastic bag or anything else so the surface doesn’t dry out.  Leave out at room temperature for at least an hour prior to making pizza.

The Key to Using Ingredients

“Less is more—and use good quality,” Palatine advises. “People often tend to put too much sauce and too many ingredients on a pizza. When you put the sauce on, spread it very thin and sprinkle the other ingredients on. Always use good quality ingredients. If you use mozzarella cheese, use whole milk, don’t skimp with low fat. Get good pepperoni in a natural casing and don’t slice it too thin.”

Some of Jim Palatine’s Favorite Recipes

TIP: Use either corn meal or “Wondra” brand flour, between the pizza peel and the pizza. This enables the dough to slide off pizza peel when putting it into a hot oven.

Cheese, Pancetta and Arugula White Pizza (The Palatine Pizza)

  • Have the raw dough in front of you.
  • Put a little bit of extra virgin olive oil and minced garlic down.
  • Add a light coating of shredded mozzarella cheese. Then sprinkle a little feta or goat’s milk cheese.
  • Sprinkle some matchstick slices of pancetta.
  • Cook in the oven until brown and crispy.
  • Dress a bowl of arugula lightly with olive oil and red wine vinegar; put it on top of the hot pizza and let set.

Cheese and Sausage

  • Have the raw dough in front of you.
  • Put down a thin layer of tomato sauce (canned tomatoes in a food processor with salt, pepper and olive oil).
  • Add a light coating of mozzarella cheese.
  • Cut uncased Italian sausage into dime-sized pieces and sprinkle on top.

Cheese and Onion

  • Have the raw dough in front of you.
  • Add a light coating of mozzarella cheese.
  • Add goat’s milk cheese.
  • Sauté onions with a little bit of sugar until brown.
  • Sauté mushrooms.
  • Sprinkle the dough with the onions and mushrooms then drizzle with truffle oil.

TIP: Use cherry, applewood or hickory wood in your wood-burning oven for added flavor.

To learn more about the Isokern ISO’ven Outdoor Wood-Burning Oven, visit the Isokern page on the Instone website.

What’s your favorite pizza recipe?

We want to try it! Send your recipes to the Instone team by filling out the form below!

Instone Presents Isokern Fireplace Training

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Instone Presents Isokern Fireplace Training

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Are you a dealer or sales representative who would like to add Isokern fireplaces to your next quote but you just don’t feel comfortable selling it? Then Instone has your solution!

We offered complimentary training live-streamed on Thursday, June 16 10 a.m. CT / 11 a.m. ET for you to learn everything there is to know about Isokern fireplaces and accessories so you can sell them with confidence.

Together, Rob McKay, Chris Miller and Samantha Espino demystify the process of putting together a complete Isokern system and make you more confident talking about the features and benefits of an Isokern over a traditional fireplace. 

“We’re trying to make the product more familiar,” says McKay. “Our sales reps say, ‘It’s a fireplace, I don’t want to say the wrong thing.’ But they shouldn’t be scared of it. It’s pretty straightforward and we’ll show them how.”

What Is Isokern?

If you don’t know about Isokern fireplaces, they: 

  • Are made from Icelandic volcanic pumice, the most energy-efficient material on earth, which has incredible refractive properties, reflecting heat into the room instead of absorbing it like other site-built concrete, metal, and masonry fireplaces.  They will last a lifetime.
  • Can be installed in less than a day.
  • Are less expensive than traditional masonry fireplaces.
  • Are available in wood-burning and gas, vented and vent-free.
  • Can be set up indoors or outdoors.
  • Come with complementary products like firebrick/fireplace stone, flues, and Isoset mortar.
  • Come in different design styles.

Think of the ways you could add this onto orders for new home construction and additions happening this summer. If you’re selling stone veneer, you can easily add on a fireplace. “It adds more value for you and your customer,” says McKay.  It’s a win-win!

The Training Features Three Segments:

An overview – What are Isokern fireplaces? What are they made of? What are their key selling points?

Competitive analysis – How do Isokern fireplaces compare to similar products on the market and what makes them better?

Quoting how-to – A walk-through of how to work with a blueprint of a home, what measurements to take, and how to put together a quote for a customer.

McKay says this new livestream approach to Instone University training makes it instantly accessible to their sellers and dealers. In addition, the training session will be recorded and available for playback on Instone’s website. “We used to go to a lot of locations and do live training, but a lot of times people forget what they heard. This way, they get the live experience but they can also go back and watch it for things they might have missed or forgotten.”

And of course, it wouldn’t be Instone without the friendly and welcoming attitude they are known for. “We’re very professional, but we’re not buttoned-up,” says McKay. “We’re proud of being the best at what we do, but we also keep it open and very natural. It’s casual in the sense that you can come to us and ask any questions.”

The goal is to establish Instone as a resource for dealers and sales representatives to get to know the product offerings and the best way to sell them so they can better serve their customers. As McKay says, “We want to be the knowledge center of all the products we sell from the product basics to the installation.”

Learn more about
Isokern Fireplaces