Renovating Our Brick Fireplace

 A few months ago when the cold weather hit hard, I decided SOMETHING NEEDED TO BE DONE to deal with the cold temperatures in my dining room. Ever since we added on back in 2008, the room was just not warm enough. So I decided this was the year to get a gas fireplace insert to replace our wood-burning stove which we almost never used.

Here's the old fireplace with the hole next to it for firewood or something...we put our newspaper basket in it.

The way it works in home renovation is that once you decide to do one thing, it inevitably leads to more things and this project was no different. As long as we were putting in the new gas insert, we might as well make our fireplace look a lot better. It was a long process but eventually we decided on a product called stone ledgers which we got at Floor and Decor. The third party installation company they recommended got HORRIBLE reviews--as in "Never use this company!" kind of reviews.

So in the end, Scott did the work himself and did a great job.

First, he pulled out the old wood-burning stove which we sold on KSL for $200. He knocked out some bricks to change the opening from an arch to a rectangle and installed a steel rod to hold up the other bricks. He filled in the hole with limestone bricks. Then he started putting up the tile, starting with the bottom part first.

He thought about purchasing a tile saw but in the end he decided just to rent one so we didn't have to store it, maintain it, etc. Eventually, after lots of work, he finished just in time for the company to come out and install our gas insert. It looks great and I'm really happy with it.