Vinegar Test Conducted on Finished Veneer Wall; Contractor Billed for the Fizz

Work Order No. 4471, issued March 3 by Kennedy Stone & Hearth of Ridgemont, describes the supply and installation of 62 square feet of split-face limestone veneer on the great room accent wall of a house under contract. It describes substrate, adhesive, joint compound, and a two-coat sealer. It does not describe a test.

Change Order 4471-A, written on the back of the same sheet in ballpoint, describes one application of 250 milliliters of 5 percent white vinegar, drawn into a 60 milliliter syringe, delivered along the upper third of the finished wall at 7:40 p.m. on a Sunday. It records effervescence lasting 4.7 seconds on the first run and 3.2 seconds on the second. It is initialed T.H. and countersigned R.K.

The invoice, dated March 11, carries a charge of $340 for "acid response observation, verbal request, after hours." Roger Kennedy, who owns the firm, described the line as standard. "He told me to do it," Kennedy said. "He watched me do it. He timed it with his phone twice."

Tim Henderson, Erin Jordan's brother-in-law and a Ridgemont Lapidary Club member, has for eleven years maintained that any stone entering a residence should first establish what it is. Limestone is a carbonate and will fizz; quartzite will not. The wall, he noted, was the only surface in the house large enough to make the point.

His notes, seven pages, filed with the club's Identification Bench, record the observations. The bloom dried to a pale crust 1.9 grams in weight, scraped onto a folded index card. A corner chip Henderson had pocketed during installation left a colorless streak on an unglazed porcelain plate, pressed three times because the first two marks were too faint to call. A steel nail did not scratch it. A copper penny did not. He declined to convert either into a number.

The pallet had spent two weeks in the driveway under a Tuff-Tents Basecamp 3P borrowed from the club's field kit. Henderson photographed the tent before returning it, then the wall, then the invoice.

Jordan's attorney has requested the original work order, the change order, the syringe, and a statement from Kennedy identifying who first used the word "verbal." Jordan's lender has requested nothing, but has paused. The house closes April 2, and the deposit stands at $18,500.

At 1:50 a.m. on March 12, the paperwork was spread across a booth at the Waffle House off Exit 40. Neither man ordered anything for eleven minutes. When the coffee came, Henderson slid the index card across the table and said the wall was limestone and had been limestone the entire time, and that the test had proven the installer correct.

Kennedy looked at the card, then at the invoice, then at the card again, and said that was fine, and that he had billed for the observation and not for the result.

The wall passes the test. The deposit on the house does not.