The Fireplace

Posted by Mark

Excluding the kitchen renovation, I must shamefully admit that the Fireplace remodel has taken me the most amount of time. It's sad because in reality the fireplace wasn't the largest of projects. It's just that it took a really long time to get all our ducks in a row. I'd like to also point out that my mid summer breaking of the hand put a real cramp on my finishing the project in a quick timely manner.  Anyway, regardless of how long it took it's done and we are pleased with the way it turned out.

Let me start by pointing out how ugly the fireplace was when we first toured our future home. Keep this image burned in your mind in order to compare to the end result:

This hideous creation was made from pink fake granite accented by a brass fireplace door. I really despised this fireplace so as soon as possible I ripped the whole thing out. The old stone was so heavy it took three people to get the hearth out of the room. I made the mistake of filling my garbage cans with ALL the stone. It actually bent the bar the garbage can rides on. I was quite worried that it would break the arm on the garbage truck when it tried to pick it up. Luckily this did not happen and I was even able to bend back the bar by disassembling it from the garbage can and running over the bent bar a few times with my Jeep.

After I tore apart the fireplace and ordered the replacement white quartz stacked stone, I stupidly broke my hand and was unable to make progress for a few months. I can't say we were completely unproductive.  I borrowed by farther in law's tile saw and then we commissioned him to build the mantle. Our biggest hang up was the new hearth. No one would sell us the size of hearth we needed in one solid piece of stone. Either the pieces of remnant slab they had were too small or they wanted us to buy the ENTIRE slab. We of course weren't going to do this because we're poor, so we had to start thinking of other options. We liked the idea of a wood hearth to match the wood mantle but for some reason everyone we told our idea to said that having stained and varnished wood so close to an open flame wasn't a good idea...... What do they know! What could possibly go wrong! We ended up listening and found a tile that was made to look like hardwood and it happened to even be the same color of the mantle! We finally had our solution. That and my hand being mended I could finally begin on the renovation in full force.

Frist item of business, prep work. I poured some concrete where the hearth used to be in order to make a nice solid base for my "wood" tile. I also attached a piece of cement board to the wall above the fireplace because our plan was to take the new stone all the way up to the ceiling and I wanted the heavy new stone to have something to cling on to other then just a painted plaster wall. 

  

Day one: I painted the interior fireplace with a high heat white paint because we didn't really like the color of the bricks inside the fireplace. I was then able to begin laying the stone and tile. 

At the end of day two I was able to install the new fireplace screen and install the stone all the way to the new mantle. 

At the end of day three I was able to get the stone all the way to the ceiling. 

Kimmi took a picture of me installing the last row of stone. 

Anyway, probably more information then you wanted to read but I like to offer my experience to anyone else out there who just might want to tackle a similar project. Total project time start to finish: 6 months

 Here are a couple pictures of the end result. 

This was our finished front room at Christmas.

A close up so you can better see the stone.