The Fireplace That Isn't

In all of my excitement last month about our new floors, I forgot to include pictures of what is happening to our basement family room. This is stonework done by our new friend, Cyle (pronounced as Kyle, but his dad is Clyde and wanted to spell it with a C, like his own name), who is a stone mason. He and Phil installed the upstairs laminate. Because of water damage last summer, Jerrod DeGolier installed a new ceiling and new laminate flooring in the basement family room. Dan painted the half paneling. We still need to paint the top part of the walls. We don't have a fireplace, but when we bought the house in 1986, this woodburning stove came with it. After a few years, we plugged the stovepipe connection and stored the stove.

But Phil and Cyle revived the stove and built a kind of fireplace for it in the past 2 months. Cyle designed the work for the wall and built a shelf to hold andirons and wood. In front of that, he built a free-standing, up-side-down box for the stove to stand on and covered it with stone to match. Phil connected the pipe and sealed all the joints. Since these pictures, he also repainted the stove black.

One very special feature is that the stove can be disconnected and the box on which it stands removed so that when we sell the house, the new owners will be able to remove the stove if they desire. Yet still, the beautiful stonework will remain. We have had some very comfortable fires. Then with the stove being up off the floor, it is very easy to clean the ashes out. (A serious consideration for us senior citizens!)

In addition, since these pictures, Cyle put matching stonework around the 2 other windows in the basement. Phil painted the stairs, the wall cabinet containing our circuit breakers, and the inside of the window casements a brick red to further draw the room together. We will soon paint the upper walls to match the bricks that fan around the wall opening for the stove pipes. After making curtains for the windows and the storage closet at the bottom of the stairs, we will be almost done working on the basement. The only thing remaining will be the fun decorative stuff.

We are so happy with the work that we have had done on the house! We are happy to recommend Cyle's stonework to anyone. And Phil's work, of course. They are an excellent team.