This week, I wanted to share another DIY/home improvement project!
When we moved into our house nine years ago, we installed a wood stove insert into our fireplace. Our hearth was never deep enough to be “code” for a wood stove insert and we were never in love with the stone that we had. But chiseling out the hearth and possibly ripping up wood flooring wasn’t a project we were eager to tackle.
So we lived with the fabricated wood stove insert.
Well, the flood destroyed our living room floors (along with most everything else in the house).
Then, the water remediation crew dripped a mold remediation treatment all over the wood stove while they were spraying the wooden ceiling joists above.
The spray rusted the stove, so we decided we might as well update the entire fireplace/wood stove insert and fireplace hearth while we were repairing and renovating everything else.
A new fireplace
We started out researching possible hearth materials and ended up visiting a local granite store to look at slabs.
We demolished and removed the existing bluestone hearth and installed a nice granite slab instead.
After building up the inside of the fireplace with cement and blocks so that the wood stove could be inserted and leveled, the overall structure was much improved.
With the insert and the granite slab in place, we sealed the granite (which made it a bit darker) and then set out to tackle the rust on the wood stove.
A new fireplace insert would have been wildly expensive, so my husband sanded down the rusty spots before we sprayed the entire stove with a high heat spray paint.
The transformation was amazing! The stove looks good as new.
We wanted to update the mantle as well, but we struggled to find the right piece of wood. That will be another upcoming project.
Stay tuned!