Hearth and Wood Stove

We spent the past week trying to get a hearth done before the wood stove showed up yesterday. It was no small job- 6'6" x 10'6". It includes the entryway also and should be big enough to contain most of the mess from the firewood!

Sunday, June 20th, Brent helped do the dry run layout of tiles and cut the cement board to size.

Then came mortar and placement of the cement board. It was a chore for Dave to get the cement board screwed down. A chair and pillow helped. (Some Father's Day!)


The next day I mortared while Dave placed the tiles. We both were sore from crawling around on the floor and our evenings were pretty busy the rest of the week so we took a few days off before grouting.

Friday night the 25th we had to get the gout done, so back on the floor we went. I squeezed the gout out of a "tube" (improvised with a ziploc bag) and Dave smushed it into the grout lines. The clean-up was very time consuming. I cleaned a tile, tossed the sponge to Dave, he rinsed it and tossed it back for me to clean another tile. We did this to the whole area 3 times. I later did it a couple more times to get the grout remnants off the tile.

Yesterday they brought the stove and installed it. It has one looooong stovepipe!

Jan-Mar 2010

It's been quite awhile since I've added to the blog. The construction progress has been slow. We have just been enjoying using this vast amount of space!


The kitchen countertops were installed at Christmas time. The red cabinet in the background is the color I intend to paint all of the ugly metal avocado green cabinets!

The bathroom now has a door, medicine cabinet (and mirror, yeah!!!!), and towel rods.

The upstairs bedrooms have been cleared of things that don't belong in bedrooms so that they are usable bedrooms.

The upstairs storage room however is almost full!

The dormer area is all painted. It took me 3 weekends to get the primer and 2 coats of paint on everything!
We are in the process of installing the railings on the balcony and stairs. Dave has the rest of the pieces cut. He just need to sand them (the time consuming part!) then we can install them, which is the easy part!