Bringing the river (rocks) into the house and keeping the spiders out

We now have river rocks in our entryway.

They are very much like the river rocks in our kitchen, except these have been cut flat on one side so it's not painful to walk on them.

To glue the rocks with the cut surfaces flat, I weighed them down with backerboard and a set of encyclopedias: proving that, although Wikipedia may have great linking capacity, all households still need a set of encyclopedias.

Here they are, glued in place.

Mixing the grout. . .it's impossible to feel the finer lumps in the cement through the nitrile gloves. I had to use my hands. The texture was something between pancake batter and natural stonewear clay.

No turning back now. . .six people arrived at the door during this stage and midway through I needed to take a daughter to the store because she had immediate need for purple nail polish. It was a frantic afternoon, trying to clean off the excess before the cement hardened on the rock surface. It took about eight hours to clean residue off the rocks.

Owww.

The skin had been damaged the previous week from the varnish remover that had eaten through my nitrile gloves. I think the cement actually helped by exfoliating the already-dead skin.

Keeping the grout wet for 48 hours for good cure. Doesn't it look like rain? I did a bit of plaster sanding before painting; and the dust on the rocks, it looked like snow. Maybe the dirt kids track in will look, well. . . like soil?

Testing them out. . .they feel quite smooth and cool.

Sealing the grout. . . and preparing the molding:

I still have to sand and finish the banister. But the entryway is finished, including caulking under the molding to discourage covert spider activity.

Plinths are so cool. They remind me of chess pieces.

And here is Pascal, sitting on the step and meditating on the river rocks: