Home is where the Hearth is.

Hey, remember how our grout got all screwed up and we had to wait for the new grout to come in and we decided that while we waited we could rip up our hearth in replace it with tile to match our kitchen? 

And remember how that all happened before Christmas?

Well.  We finally finished it.  (Almost.)

The last post showed how we leveled off the concrete that was under the original hearth.  After we got it level, we had to build up the height, so when we layed the tile, it would sit flush with the fire brick inside the fireplace.

We did this by simply layering plywood on the concrete.  Each layer of plywood was attached with good old Liquid Nails, and then screwed into the layer beneath.

(You probably haven't noticed throughout these posts, but it seems that whenever the tv is in the shot, we are watching some sort of sporting event.  It makes me laugh.  Here, it's football...college, by the looks of that logo.  )

My right shoulder is on the verge of falling apart from all my years of volleyball, and it is hard to screw into concrete, so Joe got to do most of the screwing.  (Dirty jokes here.)  

Here, one screw of many.

We added weights to feel like we were at gym.  :)  (And maybe to help out with the Liquid Nails.)

We did all of that work you see above back in December.  What you see below is work we did yesterday.

Onto the almost-level final layer of plywood, we added a layer of cement board.  The tiles had all been cut waaaay back when we started this project, so all we had to do was mix some mortar and slap the tiles down.  We wanted the look of  a single piece of stone, so we didn't leave a grout line.

I neglected to take pictures of the process, so you get only one of the semi-finished result.

(Notice, now on tv, golf.)

The tiles were not perfectly square, so there are slight gaps where some of the tiles meet.  We haven't yet decided what we are going to do about them, but they aren't that noticeable, so we're not worried.

Now all we have to do add some molding around the egdes, and we'll be finished!

Even without the molding, it looks great.  It's a vast improvement from the old, stained, gross stamped concrete.  When you're in the foyer you can see the kitchen tile and the hearth, so it's great that they match now.  It's almost like an actual cohesive design...something the house lacked when we moved in.

And we're just getting started.