fireplace facelift// process.

We have wanted to redo our fireplace for at least a year. But after Drew trying to climb up it one day about a month ago coincided with us doing a Houzz perusal (that site is amazing and addicting...) we got up early the next morning (yeah, 5 am on a Saturday, we love our DIY projects: you can check out some past projects here, here, here, here and here) and started tearing the old stuff off as soon as we'd made sure that the tile we wanted to use was in stock in our area.

The boys loved being more involved in the process this time around.  They loved that Papa was "fixing the fireplace" and always wanted to know how they could help.

Kevin had to install new hardy board before he starting putting the new tile up.

Having the tile come in 12 in squares made the tiling go so much more quickly.  All the spots that required specially cut pieces proved to be very time consuming so we were super glad we didn't have to place every single tile.

Here it is at the point that all that needed to be added were the individually cut pieces around the fireplace opening and along the wall.

At this point the tiling and grouting was done (finally, I'll be okay to not need to grout anything else for a long while) and all that was left was paint touch up and new baseboards (where the stones have previously been).
I'll do straight up before and after shots in the next post.  I didn't want to overload one post with all this and the before and after pictures.
The process was not excessively hard but it did take a bit of planning, especially since the tile was too hands on to try and do while the kids were awake.