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Szalony's first step on the job was to build a cast-in-place hearth, which he stamped and textured using a slate texture and integral colors and stains to create the look he wanted.

With the hearth completed, Szalony was able to move on to the overlayed fireplace surround and mantel, on which he used 12 bags of Increte's Thin-Crete Vertical Stamped Overlay Mix. He framed the fireplace using conventional lumber then covered the frame with 2-inch expanded polystyrene (EPS). Using a hot knife, he cut joints into the EPS to create faux stones. He added more EPS to some of the stones to create depth.

After sanding and shaping the EPS, Szalony applied a scratch coat of Thin-Crete. He troweled fiberglass mesh into the scratch coat to serve as reinforcement. A coat of Bond-Crete covered the scratch coat followed by another layer of Thin-Crete.

Szalony used four different integral colors in the second layer of Thin-Crete. He mixed the overlay with one color and applied it to the stones individually. Whatever was left in the bucket was then mixed with either more of the same color or a different color so the next stone would have a slightly different shade. In addition, Szalony had a separate container with a small amount of yet another color. "As we would trowel on one stone we would take a little bit of that color and just dab it on there so when we troweled we were blending two colors," Szalony explains.

He sprayed the integrally colored overlay with liquid release prior to using textured skins to stamp each stone, one at a time. "By doing this we can make it look like they were real, individual stones," he says. "And by doing this we could get a different type of texture on each different rock and mix up different colors so they weren't all the same."