The corn stove has arrived!

We have had quite the project going on here this weekend. Dustin took Friday off because he picked up the corn stove Thursday night.  Here is a picture that I took sometime..it looks like winter since those plants are inside. This is with the old stove and the old tile that Dustin says looks like it came from Hardees.

haha, I just noticed Margot on the mantle... that's probably why the picture was taken in the first place.

Here is a pic of the fireplace without the buck stove.

Dustin took off work Friday and this is how we started our morning. He borrowed a hammer drill from work and started working on the mortar that was between the tiles. It really went faster than we expected. The battery kept dying, but even with that, he was done in a few hours.

And then it looked like this....

No photos really capture the dustiness that this little project included!

Since it is such a small area, we sprung for slate. We LOVE slate and would slate half our floors if it wouldn't cost us a few years of house payments to do it! This isn't our first tile project. Last summer, we gutted out bathroom and tiled the floor and shower walls.

First, we selected the tiles that we liked the most, then laid it out to see what it would look like and to plan. Then, we spread out the mortar using a trowel that has grooves. I didn't take any photos during the tiling process because it is a bit involved. (It isn't HARD, just not really a project you can keep stopping to get the camera.)

Tiles set

The above pic shows the tiles as they are set and drying. The white things in between them are spacers to ensure that the grout lines are equal and straight. You can also see the new stainless steel pipe that Dustin and his dad installed in our chimney on Friday night. The tiling only took us about an hour. We were lucky and only had to cut one tile. My father in law bought a tile saw when they tiled their kitchen, so it is HANDY! We left the middle untiled. The stove has to be pulled out once a year to lubricate so we poured concrete here. Slate isn't real super strong and the stove weighs 240 lbs. Dustin installed wheels on the bottom of it so we can easily get it in and out.

Here's a close up of the right side.

We grouted the tile today and we're waiting for it to dry. We needed a LITTLE bit more grout to really get the job done though. I think we are going to wait until we get the stove in and trimmed before we finish the grout. We aren't sure what we are going to do about the two holes on each side yet. There were vents there that the buck stove needed but they get messed up in the removal. So, for now, we have four scary holes that Sophie keeps playing in.

I'll post more before and after pics as we get closer to "after".