Rustic Stone Diary Page One

My friend Raphael Speed of Mosaic and Stone Tables approached me about etching designs onto his stone tables. He wanted me to cut a vinyl template to his design and he wanted to test the outcome of sand blasting through the template, leaving the design on the polished stone of the tabletops.

I fitted the templates for Raph and left them to dry and went back to work. Raph then sandblasted the templates with his own equipment – we were both a little nervous that the template would lift and the tabletop would be destroyed – and as they don’t come cheap, not a good idea! This was partly the reason that I left Raph to the etching process, as I couldn’t bear to watch if the template lifted. I needn’t have worried as a couple of hours later Raph called me to complain that the template was very hard to remove – bloody ingrate!

I went to help remove the template and look at the finished product – just as well really as this threw more problems up – the grit that Raph had blasted the design with was getting everywhere when trying to remove the template and as the grit scratches the granite top it was very tricky to remove. If any grit got under the blade that we used, again, the stone top would be useless.

Anyway, the tables were cleaned up and both survived the process. They looked great. Just simple designs etched lightly into solid stone. We both loved it and were convinced that we were onto a winner. We couldn’t wait to get the tables to Chelsea to find out if Raph’s customers were as impressed as us.

I went to the Flower Show and met Raph on his stall – he’d had lots of interest with the designs but no orders yet – oh well we both though, people are at least noticing them.

The first problem that we discovered was that people liked the tables at the shows and they sold tables because they were eye catching but people were just ordering plain tables without etched designs! I think it was one of those things – nice on someone’s table but too fussy or flashy on mine. This was a shame and demanded a rethink.

During this time (in between Chelsea flower Show and Hampton Court Flower Show) I had expanded on the idea of stone and bought a compressor and sandblasting kit to etch glass on site. I expanded on that idea and started etching designs onto sold stone on site also, going as far as Oswestry in Shropshire to work on local stone artist Mark Evans’ project that he was involved in. This proved to be an interesting project – several local artists had collaborated (in some instances, anyway – you know who you are you non collaborator, you) on. Mark’s part of the project was a Portland stone wall and return that he wanted to etch lots of lettering into – all memories from local people about the local area. We dubbed the project “Old lady’s Graffiti”. Mark helped me and we applied the template on the Saturday morning and started etching in the afternoon. We packed up around 6pm and mark bough me Chinese. Mark and family were kind enough to let me stay at their house just on the border of Wales in the countryside – beautiful. We may or may not have had too much wine that night and when Mark woke me at 6am the next day I felt awful!

We headed for the site we were working on and carried on etching all day. The petrol compressor worked hard all day and must have been pretty noisy for the locals on a Sunday morning but no one complained. We were worried about the weather as if it started raining we would have to stop. We were lucky and it didn’t rain. We stripped off the template and surveyed our work very nervously… it looked great. It could have been a little deeper etched but we were happy enough with it. We both said after that more text but smaller may have looked better and we would have both done things a little differently with hindsight but there it was. Finished. My first major stone project. I drove home very much relieved that it had worked out so well – as I mentioned earlier that if something went wrong thousands of pounds worth of stone wall would have to be scrapped at my expense.

I have since worked with Mark Evans on several projects and we remain good friends, currently working on a tricky memorial stone with him. And one day Mark, we will put all of our ideas together and make something together that will make us wealthy!

All this work on large stone in different places shaped my future now that I look back on it. I had to buy a car large enough to transport the compressor and all the equipment about which I am still paying for I might add.

With all the travelling I was getting bored and wanted to do some small projects at my office / workshop. I had toyed with the idea of house signs on several occasions but wasn’t keen. I hate to do stuff that is already being done and done to death. After discussing it with my friend Dave in the pub one night I had the idea that I would like to try to make house signs out of a natural boulder and he agreed that it certainly wasn’t something that you saw every day and liked the idea.

About three months later (because I work fast when the mood takes me J) I got myself down to the local garden centre to see if I could find what I was looking for. Even though I had no real idea what I was looking for. I knew the stone had to be smooth and a nice colour so I picked up one that was probably some sort of glacial boulder and one that was (I still haven’t found out definitely what type of stone it was) like a large cobble which I have been told was a Scottish Cobble although others have later contradicted that.

Whilst on my search for these two stones I also picked up a nice looking piece of moorland slate. I made the Scottish cobble into a house sign with the name “Rosemary Cottage” – my own house. The piece of slate was made into my friends house name “Elmsdown” which is still pictured on the site Rustic Stone House Sign front page thumbnails. I gave this as a gift to my friends when I had finished photographing it. Unfortunately about two months later they sold the house! On the up side they did order another for their house in Cornwall. They were over the moon with their sign and passed my details to their friends, which brought me quite a bit of unexpected business.

After this success and the amount of very positive feedback I was getting from everyone that ordered a signs I decided to make it into a proper business. I registered the domain rusticstone.net and started to put my site together and also split it away from manifeststation.co.uk where I had tried to run it with what I was doing with glass.

This was about August 2002 and I had about six pages up on the new domain with the pictures that I had taken and basic ordering instructions – looking back I really didn’t know what I was doing with the site but splitting the two products was definitely a good idea.

In September, instead of going away I would normally do with my wife and child I persuaded them (no easy task) to go to North Wales instead. I wanted to look at the slate quarries. We booked a fantastic cottage in the Lleyn Peninsula, right slap in the middle so that you could see the sea either side. We had a wonderful week and were all glad that we did it – I would recommend anyone going to the Lleyn Peninsula, as it’s a very beautiful part of the world.

We went around all the quarries that were open to the public, watched slate splitting techniques (at least until my daughter dropped her crayon tin in the middle of a demonstration, causing a hell of a clatter, and we sheepishly left) and enquired about going up to the slate dumps to scavenge for slate. We didn’t find anywhere that would let me without hardhat, gloves toe ‘tector boots and a method statement! This was no good. This caused me to walk along a public footpath for miles above Llanberis Slate Mine and pick up broken slate from the side of the footpath and drag it miles back to the car. One piece was 35 kilos, so perhaps this gives you an idea of determined I am. Did I also mention that it was persistently raining? Persistently, I tells ya!

I had parked just inside of the entrance to a large power supply place just to one side of the mine and before long someone turned up to enforce the “Under No Circumstance Can You Park Here” signs (or words to that effect). Luckily I had filled the boot of the car, the rear floorwells and the front passenger floorwell with wet, muddy slate. The 35 kilo bit that nearly killed me dragging it down the slippery footpath I delivered to London when someone bought it. The couple were moving to Cornwall and were please to bits with their House Sign you can see their testimonial here House Signs and Pet Memorials.

All in all, my busman’s holiday went very well. Not too much moaning from wife and daughter as the weather was nice and the scenery good – we even managed to swim in the sea in mid September. I had found some slate but nothing that you could call a supply.

When we returned, I found that I had effectively been evicted from my office, which was surprising because it was at a friend’s farm. He’d had a change of heart and wanted to install his wife into my office, so I had to leave. This caused massive problems with telephones and faxes as you can imagine – let alone all the equipment.

I found a new office eventually but that wasn’t without its problems as making house signs and plaques isn’t exactly a quiet business. I found that I was restricted to working on Saturdays only because of the noisy compressor. To try to deaden the sound for the nearby house and the other offices I installed the petrol compressor in a disused stable and shut the doors. I had a bout a 30-metre airline running off that to the small workshop where I had the sandblast cabinet. This was ok for a while, though a pain working every Saturday, and the landlady didn’t complain although the caretaker did, and stirred up the other offices and nearby house also!

I continued in this manner for another few weeks as it was now running up to Christmas and was getting pretty busy. Typically the lad that I had helping me on Saturdays let me down by simply not turning up one day which didn’t help.

I looked into buying a quiet compressor to keep my neighbours happy and hopefully speed the house sign engraving process up, as the petrol compressor wasn’t powerful enough. I bought a second hand one from somewhere up north. The only problem now was that it would only run on three-phase power. I had to get three-phase power installed in my workshop. Luckily the company next to my office (my office and workshop are in separate areas of the same yard) are electricians and for a mere £500 + V.A.T installed 3 phase power into my workshop – eventually.

After much too-ing and fro-ing to the local shop that makes high pressure hose connectors I got the compressor ready to fire up. Only to find that it didn’t work! It turned out to be a problem with the 3 phase power supply to the yard. Sometime over the years it had been damaged and was only delivering part of what it was supposed to (that’s as technical as I get with electrics). The next problem was that, when the power company were called in to fix it, they traced the fault to a neighbouring house, which refused to let them work on it! The power company threatened to take the person to court, and after the guy spoke to his solicitor (who probably told him what an idiot he was) he relented and the problem was fixed that day.

With my new ultra powerful compressor in place I was missing just two things. Customers and stone. The customers had dried up since the Christmas advert in House and Garden Magazine and the website just wasn’t pulling much in.

I found my slate supplier by pure chance. I met a guy that told me of three or four quarries in north Wales that were still family owned. I called the first one and they were happy to let me pick over their slate dumps. It’s pretty hard going and difficult to find enough natural slate to make the house signs, memorials and pet memorials with. I filled the van that I had hired with the slate and went back to the hotel that I had booked for my wife and I in the village.

Big problems the next day. We got about a mile out of the village – with a four or five-hour journey ahead of us – the van broke down. It didn’t just break down in a small way the gearbox completely ceased. We called the AA who said they would be about an hour. About two hours later the AA called and said that they couldn’t find us. When the guy did find us he was in the smallest tow truck that you have ever seen. There was no way I could see the great big van that we were in going on it! It would have hung off the back!

The AA guy (who wasn’t AA at all but a contractor hired by the AA) tried to hoist our massive van onto his tow truck and all the hydraulic fluid squirted out all over the road (which I had to clear up later to stop any motorcyclists killing themselves on). This made the non AA guy decide that our van was overloaded, probably due to the fact that he would lose his commission and about three hours out of his life if he didn’t get to tow us back south. So, he told his boss that my van was overloaded and they would have to send a larger truck. The people that I rented the van from weren’t insured to have such a heavy vehicle as that towed so I was told I would have to ditch the load of potential house signs to be allowed to be towed home.

At this point I called the company that I had hire the van from and told him the dilemma, pointing out to him that it was a bit out of order hiring out vehicles that were too large for their breakdown cover. He responded by telling me that I would be liable for the vehicle repair AND recovery as I had overloaded it with way, way too much massive bits of slate! Yes, the AA has grassed me up! The non AA guy, pissed off at not having a job to do told the AA that he couldn’t hoist the van as it was overloaded, not because his truck was too small. The AA then called the rental company and told them this AND said that this was “most likely” the reason that the gearbox had broken!

I had been on a hill in north Wales now for four hours and was supposed to be back by that point to pick up my daughter. I did what any slightly belligerent man in my position would do. I told the non-AA man to piss off. I called the AA and spoke harshly to them for landing me in the poo with the rental company by saying that the gearbox repair should be down to me. I called the rental company and told them to get it sorted out. A mere five hours later a great big tow truck eventually picked us up and got us home by midnight! Needless to say, the van wasn’t overloaded, the gearbox wasn’t my fault and I never used the rental company again!

Subsequently, the next time I went to the quarry I didn’t hire a van at all, I got the quarry to transport the slate pieces back for me – at a fraction of the cost too, I might add. You live and learn I suppose.

When we got back from the ill-fated van trip, I had a nice surprise waiting for me – House and Garden Magazine had stumbled across my website and were asking me if they could feature my signs in their magazine! Who was I to turn them down? I had to send a selection of pictures of the house signs and some text along with a price guide. I had high hopes for this!

When the feature came out it was very disappointing. It was tiny. They had only used one picture out of the five and none of the text. It was featured with four other examples of house signs that were ordinary in comparison – OK but just ordinary. I did get some work from the feature but not a lot. The funny thing was the length of time afterwards that I would get enquiries. The magazine must have gravitated to where all old magazines gravitate to – Doctors surgeries, Dentists and Vets! People with the express aim of taking their mind off their (or their pet’s) ordeal. I did advertise in the House and Garden magazine again as they offered me such a good deal but I had less response than before.

At the time – I think it was coming up to Christmas, I had an advertisement in a local free paper and an ad in House and Garden Mag and I got more response from the free local paper! This still wasn’t enough to make that year a lucrative festive time by selling house signs! It led to me becoming despondent with the company and product. I just didn’t have enough money to market the product well enough.

After Christmas I cheered up a little and concentrated on the other business a bit more as there was lots happening with that – but my heart was really with Rustic Stone House Signs. I was still getting work but not enough to make a living. At best Rustic Stone was a part time venture. This wouldn’t do as I had spent too much time and effort if not too much money for this to happen.

I didn’t think that the website was performing well enough but didn’t have the knowledge on how to make it any more productive. It was at that time only eight pages and a couple of photos just selling house signs and a few solar powered spotlights. Most of my traffic came from (in order) Google.com, MSN search and Yahoo. I wasn’t getting any hits from Google.co.uk UK search at all. I had no idea why. I was getting quite good traffic from MSN but only from a paid inclusion. I couldn’t see where the site was going wrong. At that time I was getting 17 unique hits on average per day and an average of 75 page loads per day. This had been static for about a year now. Were there potentially more hits and customers to be had?

I decided to try Google’s pay per click (PPC). It was OK I probably just about got my money back but hated the though of a competitor just sitting there clicking away on my add – clocking me up a higher bill. I did that for a few months and then the work dropped off again and I couldn’t afford to continue PPC as the term House Signs was pretty expensive to get anywhere near to the top.

I started using a web forum on website design – I thought with better design my site would perform better, bearing in mind that I had made the site entirely myself in a program called Hot Metal Pro which was pretty basic. I have to say that the forum I found was VERY unfriendly and I found myself in a flame war within two days of posting there and it didn’t end for about two weeks. But! Some good can come of all things. After the flame war I had asked the question about how many hits the other posters got from their sites and were quite amused at the small amount that I was receiving. By chance a kind gent from another forum was visiting there that day and gave me some fabulous advice on how to optimise my site for more hits.

Within a week I was getting 90 unique visitors a day. With just a few on site page manipulations! I was impressed. I stopped going to the site design forum and started frequenting the kindly strangers’ forum. I was immediately hooked on search engine optimisation.

Approximately three days after the kindly stranger (thanks again by the way, David) helped me with advice that was pure gold – the site went down. I had broken the bandwidth limits of my site. None of my potential new customers could see my site! I was furious that the host had pulled the plug on my site without so much as a warning and killed my new traffic. It too nearly three days to get the site back up – I still don’t know what sapped my bandwidth as I wasn’t getting anywhere near enough traffic to warrant that – I suspect it could be down to my bad site design causing search engine spiders to sap the bandwidth as well as human traffic doing reloads – I will never know.

The site was restored and extra bandwidth was freely given by the hosting company since I complained about a) them pulling my site without notification and b) the amount of time it took them to get the site back up again afterwards. The site was functioning again and my visitors were clicking and e-mailing.

This was when everything went wrong. If you (or I) had thought it had gone wrong before – we were wrong.

The site dropped from Google.com in November 16th 2003 – it was the infamous Florida Update – aptly named after a hurricane. My site plummeted out of the top 500 pages for most of the search engine terms – the main one being House Signs. I was afraid I had somehow picked up some kind of penalty until I realised that there were thousands of sites affected. Small businesses were going out of business at a rapid rate. I was now getting no traffic from Google at all – which was by now that far and away lead provider of hits to rusticstone.net.

I have to say that I thought this fairly typical of my luck at the time and felt pretty sorry for myself. Just when I was getting enough potential visits to the site and maybe a lot more business, the rug was viciously pulled from under my feet. Nobody seemed to know the answer and lots of us floundered for months. I was lucky in the fact that I had another site and business (strangely not affected). On the 17th of February 2004 Google unleashed its Brandy update. Successfully killing off those small businesses that it had missed with the Florida update.

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