A stonemason's website that turns down orders placed too early
An earth grave settles, and while it settles half a tonne of granite either cracks or tilts towards the side the soil gave way. On mixed ground this takes about nine months — hence the firm's name and hence the whole mechanism of this site. The family enters the date of burial, the type of grave and the type of ground, and the calculator draws a timeline month by month in Roman numerals, the way dates are carved on headstones: settling months in moss green, winter months in cold blue, the month of installation in black. The winter break is a second, independent delay and is often longer than the first — mortar does not cure below five degrees, so a date falling in December moves to April, which for a March burial means another hundred and six days. Firms that install in winter do it on wedges, and the stone stands until somebody knocks it. This one says no, and says it before anyone picks up the phone, even though families want to be ready for the anniversary. The second mechanism prices the inscription: a text field shows the lettering as it will sit on the slab and converts it into a figure per character, spaces excluded, because nobody pays for a space. The contact form recomputes the date server-side and sends it to the workshop with a subject tag and the sentence "do not accept an order for installation before this date". The family receives the same date immediately in the reply, instead of waiting for a call that would carry the same news. In the photographic header sits the list of stone blocks currently in the yard, with the date it was last checked — granite is bought in blocks, and waiting ten weeks for a colour chosen online is the most common disappointment in this trade.
