Fireplace Rock Wall

I took a few days of vacation after we returned from Minnesota so I could get some work done on the house. We tackled the biggest project; putting the stone on the fireplace wall. This is actually faux stone made from lightweight concrete. When you see stone work on apartments and commercial buildings it is all made of manufactured stone. There are lots of companies that make it. I saw this particular stone being applied to an apartment complex we pass on the way to the airport. I found a supplier close by in Alvin and bought the material several months ago. It has been sitting on the deck as a constant reminder that I needed to get it done. I thought many times about hiring someone do do it for me. I have never done this kind of thing before and was unsure of my ability to do it. I have read articles on how to do it and watched online videos but they don't give you a sense of how hard it really is. I bought the metal lath Monday, April 27th and started putting it up on Tuesday. I started to put the mortar bed on the wall Wednesday. That was a lot harder than I expected. I practically had to crawl out of bed on Thursday. Putting up the stone took three full days. It's like putting a jigsaw puzzle with no picture together. You have to arrange the stones so the look good and the joints are about 1/2 inch wide. Too wide or narrow and they don't look good.The sloping ceiling was also a challenge because I had to cut the stones for the angle. It was hard work, surprisingly hard actually. I woke up sore every morning. We are pretty happy with the way it turned out so to celebrate we went to Carrabas for dinner last night. Robin documented the project as it went along. If you want to see the process you can go to the Picassa link by clicking on the picture below to see all the photographs. The ones with the scaffolding are old photos I put in that I thought would show the progression and once they were in the album I couldn't figure out how to delete them or I would have.

Rock wall