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First we had to pick out the fieldstone that would be used. I went to several yards and picked up individual pieces. Made several trips, loaded them into my car and drove home with them. The ones I picked out had stripes, sparkles, and ranged in colour from black to white. After we had enough rocks we would use for accents, we went to a yard and ordered a full pallet and had them delivered.
Cut Granite rocks are extremely heavy—should have had the yard deliver them into the house instead of leaving them outside. It varies in width from a minimum of 4" to a maximum of 9". We had to rig boards over the stairs and with a wheelbarrow load the stones into the barrow and get them up the stairs into the living room where it was being built. The cement mixer was outside and we didn’t want to mess the area up where we were working, so there had to be enough mixed cement for a couple of rows.
We restricted ourselves to one row at a time because granite rocks need to be in place overnight to set before another row can be added. It’s slow work because the rocks have to be cut with a chisel to fit.
We did get a couple of rocks from friends that wanted theirs included. One that we used had a vein of gold in it. Another was from Newfoundland and we brought back one from a sailing holiday at the North Channel in Lake Huron.
There were a couple of occasions I couldn’t get the wheelbarrow up the boards and I had to offload a couple to make it. Haydn was just too busy laying them to have the time to bring them inside. I also mixed the cement in the mixer, but Haydn did bring that in. I had become quite a good mixer from when we did the block basement.
What a great deal I got on a fireplace insert. There aren’t many places that sell inserts for wood-burning fireplaces and I was extremely lucky to come across that one. They also sold me a set of glass doors that were on sale that were designed to be built in. They had been custom made for a previous customer that wasn't pleased with them--the value was $900. Got everything for $200. Our insert was made from plate steel. This company has stopped making inserts for wood-burning fireplaces. It was the only one they had left in their stockroom. The regulations for building wood-burning fireplaces are becoming very restrictive. Quite a few cities don’t allow them to built any more because the chimneys can become fire hazards. New fireplaces are sealed systems that don’t compromise the quality of the inside air. They’re exclusively gas with vents. Chimneys in the sealed systems are often stainless steel that makes them quite expensive.
Gas has no sound of crackling logs and no aroma either! Yes, it is more trouble to build wood burning, but in our opinion, it’s worth it. Our daughter has a gas fireplace that lacks the ambiance of ours. They enjoy sitting around ours more than they do their own. Both can be used when there are power failures that don’t allow furnaces to run. Gas fireplaces have fans that don’t work when the power is off. They did stay in their cottage one year that has a wood burning fireplace. They got the chimney on fire and had to call the fire department. The cottage is about 50 years old. Day and night, they used it for heating the cottage. Because it was the only source of heat, they were tired of feeding it the wood it needed. It wasn’t a new design, burned lots of wood and not particularly efficiently. They did add some insulation to it before attempting to live in it. It wasn't a comfortable winter for them to stay in it while they were having their new house built 3 miles away from us. Not to mention there was no washer and dryer, so they had to do their laundry at the laundromat. They experienced a lot of inconvenience for a family of four.
Our fireplace has a mechanical fan that doesn’t depend on electricity to work. It has cold and hot air vents and Haydn built an ash dump into the bottom that collects into a pit where there’s a door to it from outside. We’ve used it a couple of times and sometimes I use the ashes on the garden.
Steps to building it:
See: Buiilding a fireplace from scratch
We had three flues, one for the central gas furnace, and two for wood-burning fireplaces. We can add another one in the basement at a later time should be chose to put ourselves through building another one? If we do, it won’t be another fieldstone one; something simpler will do for the basement. We used clay flues that we bought from a place that sold stone for a very reasonable price. They aren’t used much anymore.
If you’re thinking about building a wood-burning fireplace, here’s some more facts about building them
Ours draws very well and we do use glass doors to keep the heat in, but we have the option of opening the doors, which we seldom do. The glass doors are efficient and once the logs start to burn, they keep burning ‘til there is nothing left of the wood. They ignite easily using candle firestarters that we buy in quantities of 50 from a small town not far from us. They’re made at a nonprofit community care centre.
The heat comes out the vents instead of the fireplace opening; the cold air vents from outside replace the air. Another reason for using sealed glass doors is it stops the fireplace from leaking cold air into the house when it’s not in use. We burn a fire most nights when the temperature outside warrants it – it takes the chill off the rooms. Haydn integrated the heat of the fireplace with the ducting of the house so all the heat isn’t concentrated just in the living room. He’s a purdy smart fellow and has built several in homes we’ve owned and built, so he knows what he’s doing.
It took us about two weeks of laying the fieldstone every night. Then he added a mantle he had built from very hard Hickory that he milled himself and finished. It was the same material he used to build the kitchen cupboards and much of the trim in the house.
Here’s the finished fireplace we built:
Medium-sized picture…It’s a better picture of the colours & the textures of the granite:
The rocks that sparkle are quartzite granite. They come in more colours than regular granite, vivid greens, pinks and whites.
Large picture:
The outside stack was finished with the vinyl cladding that is a greenish gray (colour didn’t show up well in the picture because it was overcast:
The hearth is slate tile finished with a surrounding of hickory that matched the mantel.
The rest of the work we did before the middle of December, 2001 was putting the insulation in the attic, the walls, around the windows and doors and stapling the vapour barrier on.
