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.

Comments

Do Dots Family System

The original post was written in January of 2015. I wrote an update at the bottom of this post in March 2021. A few months ago, a friend of mine told me about something she was doing in her family to help her family function better. Her teenage autistic son had been struggling a lot so they had been working with behavior therapists to help him and this "Do Dots Family System" had been recommended. As she described it, I was greatly intrigued since it sounded like something I wanted to implement at my own house. I looked into it and decided to purchase it right after Thanksgiving. Here is my review of how it has worked for us over the last six weeks or so. The basic idea of the chart is that children need to take care of their responsibilities before they get any privileges. It strongly reinforces the concept of "Work Before Play" . The chart helps children see in a very visual way that, until they have completed their responsibilities, they are on Le...

Hansen Family Reunion 2024, Thursday afternoon

For lunch on Thursday, Lauren and Kurt made Cafe Rio which was delicious. On Thursday afternoon, we had free time at the lake. Heidi and Aaron rented a pontoon boat and took people out for rides. This was very popular. Some of us went on the kayaks and/or swimming or just hung out on the beach.

2024 Hansen Family Reunion, Wednesday

Recently we had another Hansen Family Reunion at Bear Lake. We've been having these destination reunions since 2008. There were about 70 of us in attendance. Bruce and Michelle organized the activities and did a good job. I enjoyed myself! Hopefully lots of other people did too. We showed up on Wednesday afternoon and enjoyed a taco salad dinner, served by Neil and Kristie's family. We also worked on two mixer games: a word search with the names of all 100 Hansen family members as well as a Bingo card that involved finding people with different attributes like recent high school graduation, birthdays in certain months, etc. The word search was definitely the most popular. Also popular was playing Nine-Square and Sandy Pickle (a cross between pickle ball and badminton). Thys and Katrina might have won! After dinner, we had an FHE activity/lesson. Liz had made a book with stories of the first ancestors to join the church. She had selected different stories for us to act out in g...

Search This Blog