Our local Santa Barbara sandstone is great, but it is an expensive treatment to apply.  For a long seat wall in the back yard, we opted for a faux sandstone cap instead, made from colored and textured concrete.

Here is the 8″ block wall that is our starting point for the seat wall.

They form the basic shape and size of the cap, and then pour it with colored concrete.

Then they let it dry, for just long enough to be solid so it will stay put, but pliable enough to be worked into shape.  Here they are applying the side texture.

You can see some of the rubber forms in the foreground.

And here is the finished product.

It looks very yellow, but most of that color will come off; they apply it to give it a sandstone like appearance when it is done, which is to say, different parts of the concrete will adhere to the color to different degrees, so we’ll end up with some slightly different color shades throughout.

In the end we’ll have a nice, attractive 18″ to 20″ seat wall.