Saturday, November 28, 2009

Everyone should have one

After enjoying wood heat in our old home so much, one of the first major home improvement projects The Wife and I conspired on for our new house was to install a wood stove.  It took us a bit longer to build up our savings and arrange the installation than we'd have liked, but I'm happy to report that our new stove is in. 

We hired out the installation of the chimney and delivery of the stove, but decided to tackle the hearth ourselves.  Building the hearth was fairly straight forward, but because of our hectic schedules we ended up really pushing the time line and had to work into the wee hours of the night in order to give the mortar and grout enough time to set before delivery of the stove.

Our hearth is a pretty simple design, relying on a plywood base laid directly on top of the laminate flooring.  Two layers of durock cement board on top of the plywood provide the requisite heat and fire resistance. . .

. . . with natural slate tiles finishing off the surface.

Neither The Wife nor I had ever set tiles before, but it all came together easy enough. 

I still need to trim out the edge of the hearth, but the stove is in and cranking out the heat.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Woo Hoo!!! Looks awesome...and I'll bet the crackling fire adds a cheery (and warm) note to the house. But, where are Karta and Stanley? I wouldn't have thought you could light a fire without them crashing somewhere nearby!

Love you loads!

OR Mom

Anonymous said...

WOW...great job you two! It looks absolutely beautiful and I can almost feel the warmth that it's emitting from here!
WI Mom

Jason said...

I'm a little jealous...we'd love to have a wood stove.

Also, it seems like this blogs is for mom's only. I hope it's okay that I commented! Good chatting with you.

Jason said...

Sorry about the typos...one of these days I'll get a grasp on the English language.

Austin said...

Jason, you can start signing your comments as NC Mom if it makes you feel better.

Suzanne said...

Great craft project! I am super impressed and especially appreciate the tutorial. Can't wait to see you two in February!