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.