(good morning April 12th)If April showers bring May flowers what do April snow-showers bring?
Finally - our new, heavy duty, correctly fitting cap installed by a knowledgable, competent fireplace dude! Great guy, should have used him in the first place. Birds actually flew in through the top and surprised D not once but twice when he opened the fireplace door. I got to catch one and set him free out the window - that was cool.
News update... D is broken!! Due to some unfortunate circumstances homeowner, D has fractured his ankle in two places. Dreams of climbing ladders, hauling wood, staining and manual labor have screeched to a halt. He has immediately been put on light duty. Reinforcements have been called. His wife is currently pulling out her hair strand by strand. More details at 11.
A quick tour of our temporary living situation... Kitchen, complete with microwave, plug in skillet, toaster and small refrigerator (left). Bathroom, including the all purpose sink where you can wash dishes, trowels or your pits - whichever is the dirtiest (top right). Master bedroom contains a sweet new, extra-large Cabela's cot, a small, rickety, 1960's, lawn-chair-like tanning cot (who do you think got that one?) and 2 dog beds (bottom left).
We had some leftover stone from the fireplace so the weekend after the snow stopped and it turned to 80 degrees (???!?), Bobby jumped outside and started throwing them up there. Our stone budget is gone so this project will probably not get completed for some time, maybe years. We'll do a little here and there as we save up the money for it. At least the end result will be real stone!
Logs in the shower...what a great idea! We dry fit them so that we could waterproof then install them. Charlie would have laughed. We spent hours just starring at the arched log trying to figure out how to tie in the ceiling rafter (not shown) without making it look like doogie do-do. D and I asked each other WWCD (What Would Charlie Do)? We only had one log so we couldn't screw it up. It took courage for him to wield his chainsaw. It looks so cool.
The help arrived in the form of Rob, John and Dennis - the super stainers. The interior needed staining as well and the job seemed pretty daunting for gimpy boy (lots of high country). The guys were great and really fast and worked around our budget. We prepped as much as we could to save time for them and money for us. The stain was tinted slightly to help compensate for the aged logs and the newly installed wood so we would end up with everything looking approximately the same hue. Dennis and the guys did a great job with it and we love the color. You'll like it too.
This project started way before we even started building. It's a floor crest that we are installing in the foyer. I designed and created it using hand-cut ceramic, glass and stone. Now I've never done a project like this. I got tips from books and the internet. I'm hoping after the back is poured and cured it will flip over in one piece as easy as a pancake. Cross your fingers for me!!
(before and after the grouting process)
