Restoring a Cemetery

Now that the warmer weather is here I will be restoring and repairing the grave site of my great great great grandparents, Michael and Magdelena Behrhof.  They immigrated from Bayern around 1849 and are buried in Our Lady Help of Christians cemetery in Glenmont.  It is a small family plot with only four gravestones.  However in the last few years all of the stones have fallen over.  

To prevent further damage and deterioration to their gravestones I will be digging up the lower foundation stones, removing them, laying and compressing crusher run stone, and then leveling the foundation stone with stone dust.  The base needs to be firm and level.  Next, all of these foundation bases and gravestones had holes drilled into them and the gravestone had a steel pin which held the stone upright on the base.

Over time these pins have deteriorated, rusted, and have broke toppling the stone.  I intend to replace the pins with stainless steel rod the size of the drilled hole opening.  This will prevent the rods from rusting and breaking in the future.  

This project will be a work-in-progress.  Perhaps I can finish it in one day?  But I will be creating another post with the actual procedure on how I did this work.  Also I will be cleaning the stones with a product called D/2 Biological Solutions.  D/2 is made specifically for cleaning marble.  It costs $40 per gallon and should be enough to clean upwards of 30 gravestones.  I will be posting how this chemical works.

Note the drilled holes in the base of the gravestone and the base stone.  The stones will be re-pinned with stainless steel rod.

The stone of Peter Behrhof on the left is still amazingly pure white without any cleaning.