History of International Rock Day

Post By: @fedapaz | Source: Days of the Year

Project By: Francois Halard

International Rock Day has been created so that people all around the world can learn more about rocks. It’s not about rock and roll music; it’s all about the stone variety! After all, rocks play a big role in the environment, and they have been used by humans for many purposes over the years.

Three major groups of rocks are defined: igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic. The scientific study of rocks is called petrology, which is an essential component of geology. At a granular level, rocks are composed of grains of minerals, which, in turn, are homogeneous solids formed from a chemical compound that is arranged in an orderly manner.

The aggregate minerals forming the rock are held together by chemical bonds. The types and abundance of minerals in a rock are determined by the manner in which the rock was formed. Many rocks contain silica (SiO2); a compound of silicon and oxygen that forms 74.3% of the Earth’s crust. This material forms crystals with other compounds in the rock. The proportion of silica in rocks and minerals is a major factor in determining their name and properties.

History of International Rock Day

International Rock Day is a day for celebrating this substance, which has been critical to the survival of mankind. Throughout history, rocks have been used. Since the Stone Age, rocks have been important for use as weapons and tools. The metals and minerals that have been found in rocks are critical to human civilization. 

Rocks are geologically classified according to characteristics such as mineral and chemical composition, permeability, the texture of the constituent particles, and particle size. These physical properties are the end result of the processes that formed the rocks. Over the course of time, rocks can transform from one type into another, as described by the geological model called the rock cycle.

These events produce three general classes of rock: igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic. The three classes of rocks are subdivided into many groups. However, there are no hard and fast boundaries between allied rocks. By increase or decrease in the proportions of their constituent minerals they pass by every gradation into one another, the distinctive structures also of one kind of rock may often be traced gradually merging into those of another.

Hence the definitions adopted in establishing rock nomenclature merely correspond to more or less arbitrary selected points in a continuously graduated series.

How to celebrate International Rock Day

There are a number of different ways that you can celebrate International Rock Day. One of the options is to do a bit of research on the different types of rocks that are available across the globe, as well as the different uses for these rocks. You can share this knowledge with your friends and family. Why not go on a rock hunt together? You can collect different types of rocks and learn about them. It is always fun to spend your time doing something different with the ones that you love. 

Another way to celebrate International Rock Day is to enjoy an art project involving rocks. The best rocks for painting are those that can fit into the palm of your hand. The best surfaces for images and designs are rocks that have a flat surface and are nice and smooth.

You should also wash the surface of the rock and get rid of all of the dirt before you begin to paint. You will also find that acrylic paint works the best. You can use a variety of different types of brushes, depending on the sort of techniques that you want to attempt. When you are finished, seal the design. You can experiment with new colors and effects, creating different themes of rocks and exciting designs.

You can also spend some time learning about rocks on International Rock Day. After all, there is so much information about their formation uses, and much more. We will end this post with some fascinating facts to help you get started…

• Some minerals and rocks appear so unusual that legends and myths have sprung up about them. For example, it was believed that snakestones were the remains of coiled snakes that had turned into stones. 

• Artists have used the colors inside some minerals and rocks for many years. For instance, cinnabar, which is the powder of a mineral rock, was used for art in the Middle Ages because of its brilliant red color. 

• Meteorites are pieces of metal or rock that hit the earth. Some have broken off to create asteroids, which are big rock chunks that orbit the sun in between Jupiter and Mars. If a big meteorite hits the Earth, it can result in a crater, which can change the surroundings of where it lands.

How Natural Stone Can Help Increase Your Home’s Value

Post by: Camila da Paz | Source: International Institute of Home Staging

It is 2020, so for the past few months, I have been spending more time at home. I've cooked and baked more, and I've cleaned and organized my house more often. By doing that I've learned to cherish my own house and began to invest in items that would increase the value of my home, like new appliances, furniture, decor, and whatnot. While reading several home decor blogs and magazines, I came across an article that implies how natural stones can help increase your home's value and I found it very interesting.

It says that like other assets, you can increase your home’s value with a few investments and a bit of DIY. If you’re looking to sell your home, installing natural stone products is a smart investment as it raises the value of your property over time. Some of the stone materials you can use include: Granite, Marble, Quartzite, Dolomite, and Limestone.

All of these natural stones are high-quality building materials. They can be used in a wide array of applications both indoors and outdoors. Here, you’ll learn why natural stone products make an excellent investment, how much they cost, and how you can use these materials for home staging.

featuring Calacatta Marble

Why Can Natural Stone Products Add More Value to Your Home?

Natural stone products can raise the economic value of any home. How, you ask? Let’s look at five good reasons why natural stones can improve the overall value of your property.

Stones are natural materials

Stone products such as granite, marble, and limestone are natural components of the Earth. They have an abundant supply with varying colors and textures. They don’t contain pollutants or toxic chemicals that are hazardous to your health.

Natural stones are durable

Genuine natural stones are quite hard and durable if sealed properly. They are also less susceptible to decay, cracks, and scratches, making them ideal materials for countertops. Compared to manufactured products like porcelain and ceramic tiles, natural stones endure the tests of time, bringing long-term value to your home.

Natural stones are easy to clean and maintain

Some building materials need to be regularly painted or sealed to keep them looking great over the years. Aside from being easy to clean, natural stone products don’t require a lot of maintenance, which means you don’t have to regularly spend so much money to maintain these parts of your home.

Natural stones age well

Like a fine wine, natural stone products improve with age. Even though they don’t require as much maintenance as other building materials, natural stones can last a lifetime. With the right construction and maintenance, your natural stone products can attain their full elegance as they age.

Natural stones have enduring beauty

No two stone products are exactly alike. They come in a variety of colors, patterns, and textures, which are almost impossible to replicate, making them ideal for an exciting array of applications. Due to their unique character, grandeur, and durability, your home won’t look like any other house on the block. It will reflect your personal taste, character, and creativity.

How Much Do Stone Products Cost?

Many homeowners are hesitant to invest in natural stones as the cost of these products, compared to other building materials, can be quite expensive. What most people don’t realize is that natural stones raise the property’s value and that its quality is unrivaled.

The cost of stone products depends on a number of factors: the type of material, quality, shape, color, and density.

Listed below are a few stone products worth considering their average costs:

Marble

Known for its unique colors, patterns, and iridescent glow, marble is definitely a smart investment. By understanding the advantages it offers, you can certainly raise the value of your home for the years to come. The average cost of marble tiles can go from $7 up to $50 per square foot depending on a number of variables like pattern, color, veining, sizes, and finishing. Slabs also follow that rule and tend to be more expensive than tiles because the bigger the size, the harder it is to quarry, process, transport, and install a piece of natural stone. 

featuring Statuario Marble

Granite & Quartzite

featuring Splendor Granite

Granite is amazing! Period. It is beautiful enough to decorate the countertops of our kitchens and it's also tough enough to adorn your much deserved outdoor living space. After all, this is Florida! We want to be outside 12 months a year and we need a stone that will look just as good after 10 years!

While a basic granite kitchen countertop in Miami can go for as low as $39 per square foot installed, a Quartzite kitchen starts at $79 per square foot. Probably the main reason for this price difference is the hardness of the stone. Everyone knows granite is super hard, but quartzite is much much harder! This means that the amount of tools and time required to fabricate a Quartzite countertop is way more than any other natural or engineered stone. But the result is a Marble-Look and Granite-Tough Countertop that will be a conversation starter for years to come! Worth it!

How Do You Add Value to Your Home with Natural Stone?

Are you ready to spruce up your home? Discover home staging opportunities that will surely raise the value of your property.

Outdoor living

Stone products work well outdoors. Using natural stones walkways will accentuate the façade of your home and makes your property appear grand. You can also use stone products to enhance the garden.

Natural stones make your outdoor space more appealing to potential buyers. Without a doubt,

well-maintained gardens will catch the attention of your prospects.

Here are some areas that you can spruce up with natural stones:

- Walkways and driveways

- Stone patios

- Fire pits

- Plant containers

Interior facilities

featuring White Splendor Dolomite

You don't need a complete overhaul to improve your home’s value. You can focus on the rooms that matter most to a homeowner: the bathroom and the kitchen. If potential buyers are looking at your property, they will consider these facilities. If you renovate and add modern amenities, you can significantly increase your property’s value.

Here are some of the features you might want to enhance:

- Countertops

- Washbasin tops

- Cabinet tops

Interior flooring

Another way to add value to your home is by enhancing your interior flooring with stone products. There are a lot of perks to having natural stone floors. Aside from the natural beauty they exude, the stone products make your floors durable and easy to care for.

featuring All Saints and Carrara Marble

Takeaway

It’s safe to say that every homeowner wants to add more value to their property. There are so many different ways to do this, but installing natural stones in your home is perhaps the smartest choice you can make.

Natural stones might require a bigger investment compared to other building materials. However, due to its ease of maintenance, enduring beauty, and permanence, the value of your stone products will exceed your initial investment in the long run. If you want to raise your property’s value, natural stones are the best way to do it.

If These Stones Could Talk!

Post by: Camila da Paz | Source: Washingtonian

The 4th of July is the perfect opportunity to show off your barbecue skills, wear your most patriotic apparel, and post too many fireworks videos on your social media accounts. I personally believe that this date it's also great a time to think about the history of this great country we call home. I was casually googling interesting facts about American history when I found this article explaining where the stones that built Washington D.C came from. In fact, Washington D.C was built with lots of beautiful marble and granite. Here's why:

In the beginning, Washington was little more than woods, swamps, and farms punctuated by the Potomac River and the villages of Georgetown and Alexandria–its future as a great city dependent on its designation, in 1790, as the permanent capital of the United States. With the federal government scheduled to move from Philadelphia in 1800, the preceding decade was filled with urgency in constructing appropriate buildings for Congress and the President.

(source: George Isham Parkyns Poster Print)

Most houses in the young nation were made of wood, with a few public structures and upper-class homes done in brick. But George Washington, the Virginian who had chosen the site for the new capital and was then president, decided that Washington's most visible official buildings would be built of stone.

Stone was the standard for the finest buildings in Europe, and Washington believed that the United States, having so recently won its independence, would be taken seriously only if it erected a capital that could compete with Old World grandeur. There was a political consideration too: it was possible, in the absence of rock-solid buildings in Washington, that the government would stay in Philadelphia after all.

(source: encyclopedia of greater Philadelphia)

Ever since the first stones rose to form the walls of the White House and Capitol, this ancient material has helped define Washington's meaning and appearance. Marble, granite, limestone, and sandstone were used to build many of Washington's iconic structures–memorials, government buildings, art galleries, libraries, and churches. In these stones is written much of America's national history, democratic idealism, and mythology–enough to draw millions of people here on pilgrimages each year.

Part of the appeal of stone as a building material is its durability, suggesting permanence amid the ephemeral. Stone endures, which is why we use it to mark events and people we wish to remember, whether it's a natural landmark like Plymouth Rock or the rows of white marble at Arlington National Cemetery. Stone also has gravitas–a seriousness appropriate for grand gestures of patriotism, religion, and culture.

(source: Pinterest)

The stones of Washington also have a universal quality, connecting the city to distant places. The marble on the face of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts comes from Carrara, in northern Italy, not far from where Michelangelo selected the stone from which he carved "David" and "Pietà."

Fashioned into buildings and monuments, the cold, hard face of stone has the power to arouse our deepest emotions and senses. At the southwest corner of the National Gallery's East Building, thousands of people have walked up to touch the sharp edge of the marble. At the Vietnam Veterans Memorial relatives and friends, sometimes in tears, place paper over the names of the lost, as if in some ancient graveyard, to make rubbings to be carried away as remembrance.

(source: National Gallery of Art)

But the stones of Washington–like those of Rome or Athens or Florence–appeal mostly to the eye with their varied colors, textures, and shapes. White stone predominates–with the Capitol, the White House, the Supreme Court, and the monuments to Washington, Lincoln, and Jefferson all set off in a backdrop of green parks. Accumulated over 200 years, these structures are both immutable and changeable–their beauty shifting as the light of each day moves from dawn to dusk, with the passing of each season, with the coming of glaring sun or a cooling rain.

Professional critics have not always been kind to these marble monuments, often finding them cold and imperious knockoffs of the classical world. Ada Louise Huxtable, once the architecture critic of the New York Times, was among the harshest: "Nowhere have more banal buildings been erected in the name of the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome."

Yet even she had trouble denying their popular appeal or being moved herself. "There is an hour before twilight, with the glow of the sun still illuminating the horizon, when serene white buildings stand luminous against a clear sky, set stagily amidst the flowers or foliage of a warm spring evening or the bare branches of a crisp winter day. Then the city is touched with its own magic. The eye rejoices and the soul expands. It is an act of love between citizen and stone..."