Seth and I have a long list of house projects we want to do and we got a big one done over the last 2 months!

During this blog post I’m going to say that “we” did this project, but I want to make sure you know that Seth (and my dad) did 95% of this project. 😉

Step 1: Demo!

We originally were going to replace the entire fireplace unit until we found out it would be over $5000. After discussing it, we decided to save our money and keep the same fireplace unit. We painted all the gold parts black. We took hammers and crow bars and just started hitting! We taped plastic to the ceiling to make a “dust tent” to try to minimize demo dust.

Step 2: Beam!

We looked at a lot of different options for mantle beams and ended up deciding on an 8″x8″ solid wood beam from Westside Building Supply. The beam cost $120 and my dad used a beam cutter to cut it to the correct length. The beam set into the wall about 2-3″.

Step 3: Stacked Stone

We bought about $100 worth of stone from Northstar Stone & Landscape Supply. My dad is a contractor so he was able to show Seth how to place hardy backer against the 2x4s, place metal lath, then place a scratch coat to prep it for the stone.

Step 4: Staining the Beam

Once the stone was done, we chose some stain did two coats of stain. It turned out a little bit darker than we were planning because we did not realize we were supposed to wipe the stain off as soon as we put it on! We were still really happy with how it turned out. Once everything was dry we put the doors back on to the fireplace and decorated the mantle! In total the project cost about $300 since we did all the labor ourselves!

Next plans: We are hoping to place this exact same stone on the bottom 1/3 of our house in the front. Our plan is to take off the existing siding and use the same methods to make the front of our house look a little bit more modern. It looks like we will be having a pretty long unplanned vacation thanks to COVID-19 so hopefully we will be getting this done in the next couple months!