Friday, July 09, 2004
"I have an ugly 50's floor-to-ceiling brick fireplace in my den. What do I do?" wrote a woman from www.ths.gardenweb.com.
I am truly humbled by the Internet today. I had no idea there were entire chat rooms devoted to re-surfacing ugly brick fire places and I am quite certain that I now know more about re-surfacing ugly brick fire places than both my contractor and friend Paul together. Paul, as you may remember, flew out from San Francisco (he specializes in 50's houses) to direct my salty dog New England contractor. In spite of Paul's awesome punch-list extraordinaire he delivered to me, the "Oh-my-god-that-brick-has-to-go-fireplace looked to pose a major headache as far as my "Oh-wouldn't-it-be-lovely-if-everything-fell-into-place schedule was concerned. In other words, try making cold calls to masons in the middle of summer and just see if you get a call back. And if you do get a call back, run, don't walk. What to do, what to do....
Thank you Google. For directing me to non-combustible cement board... 'Mike' suggests covering the brick with DUROCK. The cemented board can be mudded, taped and painted to look like sheetrock, or can serve as a flat surface to install tile, marble or other facing materials. So I'm going to have a smooth wall and slap up a spectacular mantel.
Progress. All paint colors have been selected. Two protruding pipes that had been haphazardly covered with wooden casement boxes were put back up into the ceiling where they belong today. Who would do such a thing to begin with? i.e. "Gee, this will be an interesting architectural effect. Let's be lazy and hook up the washer and dryer in such a way that the pipe hangs through the ceiling of the den below and then cover it up with a rectangular wooden box. And let's make it crooked while we're at it. That will look good."
Stay tuned. Once I get all my product ordered for the house, I will be posting my Anna
Bloviation's 2004 Awards....
I am truly humbled by the Internet today. I had no idea there were entire chat rooms devoted to re-surfacing ugly brick fire places and I am quite certain that I now know more about re-surfacing ugly brick fire places than both my contractor and friend Paul together. Paul, as you may remember, flew out from San Francisco (he specializes in 50's houses) to direct my salty dog New England contractor. In spite of Paul's awesome punch-list extraordinaire he delivered to me, the "Oh-my-god-that-brick-has-to-go-fireplace looked to pose a major headache as far as my "Oh-wouldn't-it-be-lovely-if-everything-fell-into-place schedule was concerned. In other words, try making cold calls to masons in the middle of summer and just see if you get a call back. And if you do get a call back, run, don't walk. What to do, what to do....
Thank you Google. For directing me to non-combustible cement board... 'Mike' suggests covering the brick with DUROCK. The cemented board can be mudded, taped and painted to look like sheetrock, or can serve as a flat surface to install tile, marble or other facing materials. So I'm going to have a smooth wall and slap up a spectacular mantel.
Progress. All paint colors have been selected. Two protruding pipes that had been haphazardly covered with wooden casement boxes were put back up into the ceiling where they belong today. Who would do such a thing to begin with? i.e. "Gee, this will be an interesting architectural effect. Let's be lazy and hook up the washer and dryer in such a way that the pipe hangs through the ceiling of the den below and then cover it up with a rectangular wooden box. And let's make it crooked while we're at it. That will look good."
Stay tuned. Once I get all my product ordered for the house, I will be posting my Anna
Bloviation's 2004 Awards....
Comments:
Post a Comment
