It seemed like virtually every open house we visited incorporated the exact same fireplace. There was always a smattering of real brick surrounded by a wooden frame and finished with the most atrocious red stone hearth. The top it off, a marble decal had been applied to the face of the surround. It was almost like northeasterners back in the day forgot that they lived in New England, not New Spain. The worst part was that the faux terra-cotta had been cemented into the foundation of the home. Also, during construction of a new addition, the previous owners decide to open up the back of the fireplace to another room. More on that during our living room renovation.
Enter the impact hammer. Twenty seven pounds of pure power. Nineteen hundred impacts per minute. A grenade launcher in disguise. This thing was a beast, but it did get the job done. Here, you can see Hannah’s father helping dig out the old tile as we attempt to level the surface for its first coat of thinset. What would have taken days or weeks with a pneumatic chisel was completed in only a matter of hours. However, it was not without its faults. Although we did manage to encircle the entire area in plastic, we were finding red soot throughout the house for weeks after.
Once the demolition was complete, we set our minds back to design mode. We planned to cover this side of the fireplace in white Carrera marble and had already purchased the right amount – plus 10% just in case. The thing was, we had not yet settled on a layout. After a late night of placing, looking, and repositioning the fragile tile, we finally came to a decision. We applied the first layer of mortar to the vertical surfaces, installed a temporary shim for keeping them straight, and pressed on. This may have been our most difficult project to date, but the statement it makes speaks for itself.
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