There's the "front" view -- it was double sided to start. I always forget the name of the stone that surrounded it. Nice yellowish color. Brass framing of the fire box. All nicely clad with wood paneling painted that putrid shade of beige.
This was the other side of it, which we closed up -- somewhat to my wife's chagrin.
The idea was to make it as SIMPLE as possible. This was one of our inspiration photos:
Super simple, super clean. This was the nearly-complete result, sans hearth.
As the post says, there were logistical issues - some we anticipated, some, not so much. One we anticipated was the nightmare that it would be to cantilever a 500 pound piece of limestone like in the inspiration photo, not to mention having to raise up the fire box. Easy solution? The limestone was going on the floor.
The wall, nearly finished in Venetian plaster, the hardwood laid in the floor with a precisely measured opening on the floor for the limestone.
One issue was just the weight of it. Adam (pictured left, above), had thought - a though encouraged by the stone guy - that just these two guys were going to be able to bring it from his truck to the house. Adam, unlike me (after the fact) hadn't done the calculation of how much 3 inches x 24 inches by about 96 inches of limestone as going to weigh. The answer -- a bit over 500 pounds. That would be 250 per guy. Probably not impossible, but why?
So, we were delayed a couple of days while Adam rounded up some muscle -- the painter, his son, these two (and, as it turned out, me, to a certain degree). With proper man power in place, it made it journey from van to living room:
Fortunately, I'd religiously been shoveling our front walk, so it wasn't an icy mess.
Sizing (and weighing) up the challenge.
Our painter (left front), Adam (right front) and Adam's son (left rear)(the fourth being out of the picture). 125 pounds per guy was a lot better than 250# per guy.
OK, so its in the house. Now what? It was an accomplishment to get it from Point A to Point B unscathed, but it was quickly becoming apparent that we hadn't anticipated the difficulties in getting it from Point B to Point C -- namely, in place in front of the fire box.
It was resting on two pieces of trim. The cutouts from the baseboard were in place (in hindsight, it would have been easier to have the baseboard go in AFTER the slab went in. And, the cut out on the Venetian Plastered wall were done. Finally, the white oak had been laid and trimmed to accept the hearth.
But how to get it there without: (a) scratching up the floors, damaging the baseboard, damaging the Venetian Plaster wall? It was cut to fit perfectly "in place" but not to get there. Whoops. We were going to need to get a little bit lucky.
Margot did not have any ideas . . .
. . . except to add her hand prints to the freezing-cold slab.
Adam decided to put down some mortar while we all thought about the problem.
The winning idea was to shove the slats underneath, slide the slab across it (as no one could be on the other side to lift it) shoving, a la a leg press.
Smearing the mortar was a lot more thoughtful than it looked. Adam essentially needed to space it so that nothing spooged out and also so that the slab on top of it would settle flat, without any teeter-totter effect.
There is one photo missing here -- because it was never taken, because I was called upon to help. Essentially, that photo would show Adam and one of his guys sitting on the floor facing the fireplace, heels up against the slab, with me and his son bracing ourselves to the floor as much as possible, so that we could provide a spot of resistance to avoid just sliding backwards. And, the painter trying to provide support on the other side. As a photo, it could have looked cool. As a video, it would have been ugly, because it WAS ugly. The floor was slippery. We couldn't get any traction. The slab was heavy, so the leg pushing was pushing us more than it was pushing the slab. And when push came to shove (forgive the pun), that last few centimeters were where things crashed a bit. But thankfully, just a bit. As the slab slid into place, there was a bit of a chip to the Venetian Plaster (repairable). There was a bit of a gash in the baseboard (also repairable). Worst, there was a bit of a chip in the corner or the limestone (not really repairable, but not very noticeable -- it was the corner going into the wall).
Once it was in place, Adam trimmed the edges with some "spare" pieces of the kitchen countertop.
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