Custom headstones in Tipp City, Ohio

A Tipp City monument company close to home

Our office is on South County Road 25A. It is our only office in the Miami Valley, so it serves families in Troy, Vandalia, Piqua and the countryside between.

Most families have never chosen a memorial before. That is fine. We start with one conversation about the person and the cemetery, and we carry the details from there.

Next comes a drawing, sent to your phone or inbox. Ask for changes until it feels right. You pay nothing until you have seen it and said yes.

After you sign off, we check the cemetery's rules one more time, engrave the stone and install it ourselves. Because the granite is already here in Ohio, many memorials are finished within four weeks.

Memorials we have set in Tipp City

At Maple Hill Cemetery we set a companion upright in Butterfly Blue granite. It is a classic serp-top on a 48 inch base, with deep-cut lettering and a carved design. We also set a single upright there in Black Ultimate, with an oval color photo on the face.

At St. John's Cemetery we set a companion bench in Heritage Grey. It is a flat 48 inch seat on two straight legs, fully polished. A bench gives visitors somewhere to sit and stay a while.

You can see both Maple Hill memorials in the gallery below. The families wrote to us afterward, and their words are here too.

What cemeteries around Tipp City require

No two cemeteries in Miami County share a rulebook. One pours its own foundations, another limits the length of a double marker, a third approves every vase. We learn your cemetery's limits before we draw a single line.

Riverside Cemetery in Troy

More of the memorials in our portfolio stand at Riverside than at any other cemetery. It is run by the City of Troy, and city staff pour the foundation under every monument and bench. The city charges its own fee for that work.

Foundations are poured in the order requests arrive. Funerals and mowing come first, and weather decides the rest, so the city does not promise a date. It also waits until the soil has settled after a burial.

We plan around this from the first call. Each monument needs a 4 inch margin of foundation on every side, and a grave can hold up to six markers in all. Our Troy page covers Riverside in more detail.

Forest Hills Memorial Gardens

Forest Hills is on North Dixie Drive. Its team approves every marker and monument before it is placed, including those from outside companies like ours. Inscriptions, photo cameos and vases need its approval too.

So we send the full design for approval before we carve. Vases must be an approved material, set in the foundation or on a separate granite base. We build that into the drawing from the start.

Forest Hill Cemetery in Piqua

Forest Hill allows one above-ground monument per grave. Footstones must be flush with the lawn, and a double marker can be no longer than 88 inches.

The superintendent decides where each monument stands. Cremation lots take ground-level markers only. We check which section your plot is in before we suggest a style.

Maple Hill, Pisgah and the smaller cemeteries

For Maple Hill, St. John's, Pisgah, Polk Grove in Vandalia or any small country cemetery, we request the current rules before we draw. Some post them only as a scanned page, so we read them line by line. Rules change, and we would rather check twice than ask a family to start over.

Choosing the right memorial

Start with the plot and the person. The section often settles whether a stone can stand upright. The person decides everything else.

• Upright headstones stand tallest and hold the most lettering. Families here have chosen Butterfly Blue at Maple Hill, and Heritage Grey and Black Ultimate at Riverside.
• Slant headstones lean back on a low, solid block. Our Georgia Grey slant at Riverside is 24 inches wide and 16 inches tall.
• Flat grave markers lie flush, so mowers pass right over them. Forest Hill requires them on its cremation lots, and Riverside and Forest Hill both want footstones flush with the ground.
• Bronze markers are cast bronze on a granite base. They lie flat, so they work where a cemetery asks for flush markers, and some families know them as grave plaques.
• Memorial benches give visitors a place to sit, like the Heritage Grey bench at St. John's.
• Cremation memorials hold ashes inside the granite. We set a two-niche columbarium in Bahama Blue at Polk Grove Cemetery in Vandalia.

Custom artwork can be part of the memorial, photos included. One family at Casstown Cemetery asked us to etch a picture into black granite, and another at Maple Hill chose a color photo in an oval frame. We carry 42 granite colors to choose from.

What a headstone costs in Tipp City

A Tipp City family usually spends between $900 and $6,000 with us. That figure covers the design, the engraving and the installation. A larger stone, a pricier granite color or custom artwork moves it toward the top.

Some cemeteries add a charge of their own, like the City of Troy's foundation fee at Riverside. That money goes to the cemetery, not to us. We tell you about it before you approve anything, and our guide to cemetery foundation fees explains how these work.

You can also spread the cost. Our payment plans run through SweetPay, and Klarna and Affirm are there too. Seeing what you qualify for leaves your credit score untouched.

Visiting our Tipp City office

We are at 5222 S County Road 25A, Tipp City. We meet by appointment, so the time is yours and nobody is waiting behind you. Call (937) 703-4400 and we will find a time that suits you.

Weekday appointments run until 7 in the evening, and Saturdays until 4. Plenty of families never come by and handle everything from home. We are glad to work either way.