We bought this mantle at a lumber store. It was just a huge piece of solid pine. We took a hatchet, a sander, a hammer and whatever else we could find to give it the hand hewn look. Then we finished it with a good sanding, and one coat of poly-stain in a satin finish.
When the fireplace is on, you can see the flame from every side of our great room, which includes our kitchen, living and dining rooms.
We choose to wrap the matching baseboards around the bottom, for a built in, "I came with the house" look.
The scariest part for sure, was cutting a hole in the outside wall. What if it didn't fit? We would have a huge hole to the outside! It did fit, we measured a million times and cut once. The orange is the template we made of the exhaust ducting
Then we had to seal all the corners and crannies with fire block caulking. We then carefully slid the fireplace into the hole and it fit! (I have omitted copious amounts of tedious steps, so please do not call or comment that we did it wrong.)
We then had to frame the top in. I wanted a china cabinet on the back, which was actually the hardest part of the whole job, (which is why it's still not finished) because of figuring the measurements we would need.
After framing, you cover the frames in boards. I recommend pants when doing construction, even if you have cute toddler legs.
Then moisture paper.
Then a layer of chicken wire, or lathing screen, and then a scratch coat.
Once that has set, (we let ours set for about 6 months. But 24-48 hours is fine. :)) you can finally put on your stone.
It took us 2 days, to finish putting the stones up. We had growing pains learning how to deal with the mortar. It had to be just the right consistency or the stones would fall off. We had several fall off the back and there was swearing.
It was frustrating that we had to live with a half finished monstrosity in our house for so long, but time and money did not permit it to be finished in a few weekends. But we saved THOUSANDS of dollars doing it on our own. And now we have a one of a kind feature in our home, which is nice since we live in a town house and they are all the same inside and out; with the exception of a shade or two of beige. The fireplace is a Heat-N Glo, and it has a thermostat, so I am able to use it to heat my house like I stated before. We bought the actual firebox unit from someone off of local want ads. They gave us a steal if we came and pulled it out of their house for them. It sounded shady, but that's their business, not ours.
These fireplaces retail at $5000, this does not include the whole wall we built or the stone, just the firebox and wooden top like a table. We have not hit the $1000 mark on the cost of building this yet! DIY is the way to go if you have the skills. Now that we have finished this project we are feeling pretty self confident that we can do anything now, like finish the basement or build a barn. Of course this is a town home so the barn will have to wait until we move someday.
Links to resources:
Fireplace-Heat n glo
Stone: Great Stone, http://www.yellowpages.com/salt-lake-city-ut/mip/greatstone-inc-461922962
Blogs always gives me information about different things which is new for me.As like your blog about three sided fireplace.It is good to see & design is really attractive.
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