I haven't had much time to update the post here, but the projects continue to move forward. The loft painting is 80% complete (and often moved to the bottom of the project list because it's adjacent to the boys' bedrooms and we are mostly painting at night), furniture has been moved around in the front room, and the fireplace/built-ins are coming along.
Over the course of the past month or two, we installed the 8 base cabinets for the built ins. Then D made a shelf to sit atop the cabinets and added the bookcase side walls. He added trim to the top and sides and finished the top of the bookcase with drywall. He also decided to run speaker wire through the crown molding to allow for surround sound, and mounted the small speakers we had from our old house. He removed the old hearth and made a new, reinforced box.
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| Cabinets installed. Hearth removed. |
The manufactured stones are heavy-- although we are using a stacked stone that does not require grouting, it still needs lath and a mortar backer. A few days before the stone installation, D added a skim coat of mortar to the lath per the instructions from the stone manufacturer. I also used high heat paint on the gold trim of the fireplace to give it a consistent black exterior, and bought new brushed nickel door pulls from Lowe's.
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| Black paint completed. Skim coat applied. |
D made a template of the fireplace surround and we laid out the stones in the basement. We moved the pieces around until we had a look that appealed to us. With some manufactured stone you need to watch out for "repeats" of the stone blocks but we really didn't find any in our batch.
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| Stone puzzle in the basement. |
We brought the stones upstairs in sets, applied mortar to the stones and literally stacked them up. D trimmed some of the stones to fit with a mason blade. We used some old flooring to provide a "spacer" under the hearth for the eventual addition of new hardwood flooring.
We completed the hearth portion one evening, and the wall portion the second evening. This allowed us to still have family time during the day and get the projects competed in one weekend.
D made the mantle out of oak pieces and I used stain to bring out the grain. The mantle portion took several days. The first time I did the stain, I wasn't sure of the color. I tried another (darker) color on top of the original color and I really loved the look. Unfortunately, being new to using stain, I didn't realize that leaving extra stain on top really makes your project sticky. I was able to remove the sticky portion but still wasn't satisfied with the color. I re-sanded the entire mantle and re-applied 2 different colors of darker stain. It was difficult to decide on colors-- I wanted to see the wood grain (so didn't want to go too dark) but wanted to have it match the dark floors I want to eventually install. After several days of staining, I completed the mantle. It's probably the same color as the first time I stained it....oh well.
Next up are the shelves for each side (prime, paint, install), adding the cabinet hardware and finishing trim, painting the wall over the mantle and re-installing the crown molding. Can't wait to post that "final" reveal, but this will do for now.
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| Move in day |
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| Fireplace progress April 2015 |
