Dave Croteau is no designer by any means, but he knows his stone. For the last 30 years, Croteau has owned Stoneyard, a company that’s been delivering traditional building stone of New England to a nationwide audience, and which has generated its recent success by cutting natural thin stone veneer, siding and cladding for homes in the local area. As a result, when he was looking for a way to revamp the floor in his home’s mudroom and create something new, he quickly developed an eye for design with some assistance from an old friend, as well as motivation from one of the local stones he works with every day.
“I wanted to take our own local stone and process it into this flooring,” Croteau explained of the New England Thin Stone Veneer, which is available in six unique colors, featuring the earth tones of states such as Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. “I didn’t have it all figured out, but what I was doing, was taking the material, and slicing it top and bottom, to 3/8-inch in thickness.”