Fireplace tile!

The next step in refinishing the fireplace was to cover the old brick with slate tile to match the new hearth. The hearth and tile are Montauk Black honed slate from Brazil. If you look back a few posts, you can see the old brick.

This is Vladimir, our tile guy. (He also did all of the floor and wall tile in the kitchen and bathrooms). Here he’s covered the old brick with 1/4″ cement board (that’s what the white stuff is).

Here Vlad smears thin set on the back of the cement board. The cement board and tile are on the face of the fireplace surround and also turn into the sides of the firebox.

Outside, Vlad’s son, Andre, cuts the tile into 3″ x 12″ pieces. (The tile came in 12″x12″ pieces). Andre also has a great three point shot, as was witnessed many times when he played basketball with E in our driveway!

The tile is set in a stacked bond pattern.

Once it’s all set, Vlad held it in place with some temporary wood shoring.

It’s almost done! The stone is sealed with an enhancer to bring out the color and protect it from staining.

Even through the stone is very dark, it still has a lot of variation in color. It looks like the outline of South America on the hearth!

The final step is to install a black woven steel fire screen / curtain to prevent embers from popping out. I can’t wait until the floors are stained dark brown as well! (I also need to clean up last year’s ash from the firebox!)

Installing the Fireplace Hearth

The original fireplace hearth and surround were brick. We decided to cover it all up with honed Montauk black slate.

The slab guys measure the existing hearth and check for levelness (it’s not level!)

The slab is laid on top of the brick. (You can see in this photo how the floor tips down from the left side of the hearth to the right side – they’ll accommodate that when the install the face slab).

They shim the slab so that it is level since the brick below isn’t perfectly level.

The edges of the slabs are mitered. In this photo, you can see how they install the side piece. It is cut larger than necessary at the shop. They then bring it to the site and scribe the bottom edge to the floor.

They tape all three side pieces in place and figure out where to cut them so they fit flush to the floor.

You can see here that the side piece is cut to fit. The front piece is still too tall – they will scribe that one next.

Here they fit the front piece in place.

They put a lot of super smelly adhesive on the floor and miters of the slab to hold it together.

Once the sides are in place, they use a disc sander to ease the edges so they are not sharp. This process reminded me of the dentist. As one guy sanded, the other stood over his work with a vacuum cleaner and sucked all the little bits of dust up.

They then use a finer grit sandpaper to hone the edge.

A view of the finished hearth.

Another view of the finished hearth. Bookcases will go on each side of the fireplace. Those will be installed next week. After they’re painted, the tile setter will cover the face of the fireplace with tiles to match the hearth.

chimney repair

When we bought the house, there was a cast iron wood stove in the wood burning fireplace. The previous owner cut a hole in the back of the firebox and vented the wood stove through the existing chimney. We wanted to turn the fireplace back into a traditional wood burning fireplace, so we had Two Friends Masonry remove the stove for us.

The existing wood stove.

When they pulled the stove and flue out, vermiculite starting pouring out of the hole! This was the insulation around the flue.

We filled three bags with vermiculite!

This is the old chimney cap which had to be removed in order for the renovated fireplace to work.

Our shiny new stainless steel chimney cap.