The Fireplace Project
May 2003

Ever since we moved into this house about 7 years ago, we've talked about re-doing our fireplace downstairs. Its white painted brick and we'd rather have stone. In a B&B, we saw some fireplaces that we liked and the owner told us how he did it. Naturally, my enthusiastic spouse, Kathy, said, "You can do that!" I thought, "Yes, but...." It should be simple, but surely it wouldn't be. But with the time off and our tax refund, it seemed like the ideal time to do it if we ever were.

As we were looking into it, Dave Hagan, the Rigby Network Administrator also happened to be thinking about doing the same thing. Except he was ready to order the stone, had a smaller fireplace, and had a brother-in-law who was a mason and owed him several favors. He'd done the research, purchased the stone and was just waiting for a time when his brother-in-law could do the work. He offered to let me come over and watch/help in order to see if it was really something I could do.

So I went. And while Dave's fireplace is much smaller than ours, it did seem like a project that I could manage. Now I am fairly handy and have even spent a summer helping remodel a house for friends in college. But I'd never worked with masonry before and normally, we prefer to save up the money for professionals if at all possible. We find that our time is usually much more valuable and the pros do a better job. But a pro for this would likely be too expensive and Dave's brother-in-law either couldn't or wouldn't take a side job for us. Still, I predicted that the whole project would take three days: one day to strip the old paint off the hearth, one day to put up the wire mesh support on the wall, and one day to actually put up the stone. To this day, I can't remember what made me think it would be that simple.

I looked up the stone details on the web site (www.culturedstone.com) and located stores. While there were some a bit closer, I opted to go out to Woodstock (nearly an hour drive northwest) since that's where Dave got his stone and they had the best prices. (There was quite a spread in the markup on the stone, depending on whom you talked to.) Once I get there, I find out that I could have just gone to their other location right in Schaumburg...just a three miles from my house. This should have been a warning to me, but I missed it. The stone that we've picked out can't come in the normal week's time frame for some reason, but it will be in the following week. That's still fine because that puts it in on the 18th, the Friday before Kathy begins her week off. I can do the fireplace and have it done over the weekend in time for her and me to finish off the spring cleaning. (Kathy likes to take a week off to spring clean each year. Usually, I miss out and she prefers it that way.)

On the 15th, I begin to strip the hearth. We painted it over white because someone before us had already done so and it was chipping off. Even our layer was flaking off, so I didn't think it would take much to do the rest. Wrong! Aside from a few places where it did just lift off, the rest was stuck like glue. I used all kinds of tools, stripping compounds and implements of destruction over THREE DAYS to get most of it off. In the end, I was practically sandblasting the paint off with a stripping/sanding attachment on a drill. I'm only part way through when I realize that there is dust everywhere. The dust travels all over the house, including areas that Kathy as already precleaned. I put up covering after the middle of Day 1, but the dust still gets everyplace. I'm exhausted, but ready for the stone.

But the stone isn't coming. On Friday, I haven't gotten a delivery setup call, so I make the call to find out where it is. I call the Schaumburg store (because the Woodstock place is having it shipped from the supplier to the Schaumburg place, and then they will deliver it here). I get what is to be their stock answer whenever I call: "I don't know anything about that." So I call Woodstock and they say, "Oh yeah, our supplier called last night and said that they didn't get your stone in, so it's going to be another week." Yeah, right. "But it'll be in Schaumburg on Thursday and they'll deliver it to you on Friday." Well, we're not happy about it, but at least it's still coming. I ask if I can get the other materials now to get a head start, which they say is fine. This screws up Kathy's entire spring cleaning plan, but she's trying to adapt. We had refused an invite out from a friend for Friday because the stone was coming and postpone to next Friday, but it was too late to change it back.

Wednesday morning at 7:30, the phone rings. It's the Woodstock office telling me that the stone IS coming and they're going to try to have the Schaumburg store put it on a truck to us tomorrow as soon as it arrives. Cool. So if stone comes on Thursday, I can get everything planned out and get a good start on Friday and have it all finished up by Saturday. Then we still have Sunday and Monday to goof off. (Kathy doesn't work Mondays.) Today, I pick up the wire mesh from the Schaumburg store. It is here that I learn that I could have come straight here in the first place and eliminated a middleman. But they weren't listed on the web site and they don't know why. I also try to get an idea of how much mortar I'm going to need. The mortar bags only give vague estimates for laying full stone or brick, which is different than what I'm doing. I had already emailed the supplier and they could only say, "It depends..." without even attempting an estimate. Here in the Schaumburg store, they give the same answer, though try to estimate what it would take according to normal mason standards, which they feel is 10 bags. Now the stuff is pretty cheap, but 10 bags at 60 lbs apiece seems a bit excessive.

I get the mesh (or "lath" as they call it) and set to work. Dave's brother-in-law told me what types of screws and tools I'd need, so I'm ready. But as I look at it, it doesn't look like it's going to be enough. Dave tells me that he has some leftover that I can have, and I drive into Barrington to get it. I have to put up the lath because you can only mortar directly over brick if it's cleaned and unpainted. Since sandblasting the brick clean was not an option (though I guess after the hearth fiasco, I could have), I had to put up this lath. I rented a hammer drill to predrill holes in the existing brick and/or mortar and then drill in masonry screws with washers to hold it securely in place. But some of the screws hold and some don't and I can't figure out why. In the process, I also run out of washers because the box was shorted. I also discover after nearly being done, that if I'd used screws just a quarter inch longer, most of them would have held in any of the holes. Again, I don't know why. Even though I had everything measured out, it took nearly all day to drill enough "good" holes and cut the right pieces to cover the wall and hearth, around the fireplace and mantel holders. I also discover in this process that there isn't a square corner on that wall. Everything is slightly askew.

Thursday comes and the stone is not here. Schaumburg calls at 3pm Thursday to say that the stone is in. When I ask when it will be here today, they say, "I don't know anything about that." Unbelievable. He calls the Woodstock office and calls me back. "Okay, I can't get it out today because it's too late and all of our trucks are out. It'll be there tomorrow." I ask the inevitably question of 'when' and he says, "By noon." What the hell does that mean? "Can you give me window?" Nope, just "by noon." We wait...another day blown. I can't go get it myself because it's one big box of stone that should cover 70 square feet. It was less expensive that way and that's how much we needed.

So I call Friday at 10am just to make sure that we're on target and the guy says, "Well, it may be a little later than noon, but it's coming." I ask for clarification: "You mean something like 12:30 or 1, not 4 o'clock, right?" He hesitates, "Um, yeah...it should be." What does THAT mean? "Well it's on the truck with some other deliveries so I can't say exactly when." I ask if the truck has left and he admits that it hasn't because it's not loaded yet. "When will it be loaded and leave?" He replies (say it with me now), "I don't know anything about that." It's all I can do not to reach through the phone and rip out the guy's vocal chords.

Noon comes and goes. Just as I'm about to call Woodstock, a HUGE truck pulls up in the street at 12:45. I ask if he can put it in the garage, to keep it out of inclement weather and away from mischief. He tells me that his crane only goes 20 feet in any direction, which is just across the sidewalk on my driveway. Clever me, I climb up on the truck to look at the stone to make sure it's right. It looks right to me and I'm thrilled that it's finally arrived. It takes a while, but he unloads the stone, I sign off on the delivery and off he goes. We agree that we can't just leave the stone down there, so Kathy and Greg (my stepson) come out to help move it into the driveway. Kathy looks at it and says, "This looks more brown than I thought it would." Fear shoots through my body like a sudden chill from eating ice cream too quickly. It does look more brown. I read the side of the box that clearly says, "Vintage Sand." We ordered "Silver Sand."

Now I like to think of myself as a fairly even-keeled guy. I like to view the world from a "the glass is half-full" point of view. I don't raise my voice much or appear to get angry. But I can feel my hands literally shaking as I try to keep from completely losing it. I'm at the end of my rope by now. I go back and check the delivery receipt which clearly says, "Vintage Sand," meaning that I was so happy to see the stone that I signed off without reading it. Kathy can see that I'm about to blow or break down and calmly suggests, "Now wait, let's take a few pieces down and see how it looks. Maybe this is going to be okay." Yeah, right. Like THAT'S going to happen. While I doubt that it'll work, I appreciate the thought and we take some downstairs. Funny, but I DO think it looks good, but I'm afraid to say so. It'll just look like I'm taking the easy way out. Plus, I don’t know if I can trust my own judgment at this point. Maybe it looks like crap but I really WANT it to work, so my mind is playing tricks on me. I really can’t tell at this point.

But Kathy says, "I like it."

No, she's just saying that to make me feel better. It can't be true.

She says, "Let's bring in some more to be sure."

Okay, I'll play along. I think it looks okay too, but there's no way this is going to happen. We bring in more and kind of stack it in place and it does seem to work. Kathy asks me what I think. I tell her that I think it's good, but she CANNOT say that she likes it unless she really means it. This is the point of no return. I'm not going through all of this and find out later that she really wanted the other color. I just couldn't take it. She assures me that she's not just saying it and feels it goes better with our carpet and our new couch (which had arrived on Thursday, a week later than we could have had it because we tried to schedule it after the stone). I agree only if she solemnly vows never to mention wanting the other color again...not even in jest. She laughs until she sees in my eyes how serious I am about this. The other thing that's good about this color is it's the same stone that Dave used and I know that he has some leftover. So if we run short, I can get it from him.

It's already middle afternoon and we're supposed to go to friends in Huntley. Kathy and Greg bring the stone to me in the garage and I organize the pieces on the floor. I map out in chalk the area for the hearth and plan out the arrangement and test cut some of the stones. This phase goes smoothly as I only have to cut three pieces for a good fit. It's too late to put the stones up, but we plan to get up early the next day (Saturday) and possibly get it done.

Starting around 8am, we start mixing the mortar. This is not as easy as it sounds. My forearms ache after a few minutes of mixing the stuff in a bucket and it's our first clue that this final phase isn't going to be any easier than the rest. Even just a little bit is incredibly heavy and it takes both of us to carry the bucket downstairs. Getting the mortar on and through the lath to the bricks isn't as easy as Dave's brother-in-law mason made it look. It never occurred to me that he was a professional and it might not be as easy as it looked for a neophyte like me. I'm making a huge mess and Kathy is clearly nervous about our new carpet. But I start to get the hang of it and the stone does fit onto the hearth as I had planned. There's a bit of a gap between the top row and the hearth stones that's bigger than I planned, but it's straight, it's holding, and it looks good. And it's only 10:30!

Kathy takes over the mortar duties while I plan out the next sections. This continues to be our procedure the rest of the way. Kathy gets a bigger storage bin and figures out a better way to mix the mortar, better and faster than I did. I map out the measurements in chalk on the garage floor and fit in the next stones. Amazingly, we don't have to cut any pieces for the areas to the left and right of the fireplace and things are beginning to look up. We finish with the right by noon and the left by 1 and break for lunch. We begin to talk about the possibility of finishing it today. Kathy, who is not a late-night person, says, "Let's get this done today, even if we have to pull and all-nighter." I am shocked and pleased. I had originally expected to be doing most of this myself with Kathy to offer moral support. But here she was working hard right along beside me. "The Mix Master" I called her. She made up the mortar and then "buttered" the stone for me to put up. She's a real trooper. How many other couples could take on such a project without getting into fights over it?

But as the afternoon wears on, it looks like we're not going to have enough stone. I had generously estimated that we had 68 square feet to cover. Greg later did more precise calculations to find that we had 64.5 square feet. But our "70 square feet" of delivered stone was diminishing quickly. At 4:30, it really didn't look good. Kathy suggests that we do another section and then do an estimate to see if we need to call Dave to pick up his extra stone. I make one of my few good decisions in this process and say we should estimate now before Dave & his wife make evening plans. Sure enough, we're short. Dave lives in Island Lake, which is 45-60 minutes from us. I call Dave and he is home, but only until 6pm. We're going to lose a couple hours, but we need the stone. So I get in the car and drive out to get it while Kathy picks Greg up from work and catches a nap. I make good time, but I'm still not back until 6:30. After some food, it's 7pm and we're only about halfway done. Kathy has got to be tired, but she claims she's ready to go all night if necessary.

While it's too late to make a long story short, we do finish the fireplace before going to bed. It's 1:30am on Sunday as Kathy photographs me putting in the last piece of stone. We can't leave the mess until the next day because My Kitty (our cat) will likely get into it. Kathy cleans up the downstairs while I start on the garage. We finish up at 2am, shower and crash.

We spend a good portion of Sunday cleaning up everything. We're so tired. Our knees hurt going up or down stairs and our backs are sore with just bending over. But we're glad that we finished last night instead of stopping early. There's no way either of us could have faced the prospect of starting the work up again in the morning and the rest of the afternoon/evening cleaning up. Plus, it really looks great. And we never did have any arguments or fights from start to finish. As the pain has subsided and a few days have passed, we are already laughing about the whole thing. I don't know how we ever thought that this was a "simple enough project that we could do on our own." Had we known what it would take, we might have just repainted the brick!