The Fireplace Saga

This post has been 2.5 years in the making. We finally finished our fireplace remodel, and here's the documentation to prove it.

This is the morning after we moved in. Not the best shot of the fireplace before we demo-ed it, but it gives you an idea. Not a bad looking fireplace at all. Just not really functional.


Ah, here's a better one.



The beginning stages of the demo...and Gwen's bum crack. :) At this point the mantel, step and tile were all gone.


Again, not the best picture, but you can see the progress in the background. At this point the actual fireplace was gone, we had ripped up some carpet, and backer boarded the hole to fireproof it. And when I say "we" I mean Richie. :)


Here come Dan the brick man. This guy was probably in his 80's and still goin strong. He was such a fun guy.


How many men does it take to lift "the beast"? All of these guys right here. Once the hole was bricked, we moved the fireplace in although it was still unconnected. We were short sighted and wanted the project to be done and cost less money, so we thought it would look fine and be plenty functional sitting right on the brick floor. At this point, we had a guy building a special piece to connect the flue and the hole on top of the fireplace stove, since they happened to be different shapes. It took FOREVER.


Functional, but still looks like a mess.



Then we decided that the fireplace looked dumb on the floor and was extremely inconvenient to build fires in. You had to practically be on your belly. So we had our wonderful, strong, manly family come back and move the fireplace out. Which was trickier this time because the connecting piece had been welded on. Then Dan the brick man came back and bricked us a step. Then our strong family moved the stove back in. Whew.


Then we spray painted the flue and connecting piece all black so that it wasn't all mis-matched. Then Blaine Parry from Richie's home ward created our mantel for us. This guy is also in his 80's and is still a rock star. He chopped down the tree, let it cure, and then crafted this one of a kind mantel. We painted it white, then he came and installed it earlier this week. What's that? Did you hear something? Oh it must be the angels singing the Hallelujah chorus, cause it's finished!!!

Richie says is looks so stately and regal that the thing that would really finish it off is an oil painting of our family in smoking jackets and pipes. :) Next project I guess. This past fall I found a dresser on ksl and re-vamped it. Then maybe a month ago I found some curtain panels for sale on a yard sale site for $8! We randomly found curtain rods in our water heater closet left by the old owners. They were rusted and disgusting, so I painted those, Richie hung them up, and then the kids hung on the curtains by the couch and bent the cheap curtain rod. It was a team effort.


When we started this process we thought (or at least I thought) "oh, this will be simple. Take the old fireplace out, pop the new one (which we found on ksl) in." HA! HA HA HA!!! 2 1/2 years and a couple thousand dollars later...We finally have the fireplace we were imagining. Just in time for the state of Utah to debate outlawing wood burning stoves during the winter completely. To be fair, if it passes we could burn as much wood as we wanted during the summer, so there's that. I sure hope it doesn't pass because we have loved cozying up in the family room next to this beauty.