More Progress in Living Room

Progress continues in the living room. This past weekend we installed the hearth pad that the wood stove will sit on. To install the pad we screwed a cement board into the floor and put mortar on it to install the slate tiles. There was about a 1-inch gap where the tiles did not cover the cement board, so we had to come up with a creative way to address this. We bought some small tiles of slate and created a border, lining the tiles end to end across the back of the pad. In the pictures below Bill is installing the small tiles. There are also some close-ups of the small tiles.

This is what the pad looked like after all of the tiles were put down.

View with the fireplace to the left.

View with the fireplace to the right.

The next step was to install trim around the pad. We bought a mitre box from Lowes. They do not sell trim to the height we needed, so Bill made a very nice-looking trim by combining two pieces of trim together. He did the following installation. All that is left is to apply a finish to the trim. And, of course, we still need to install the woodstove.

I continued to work on the walls prepping them for painting. There is one plaster wall in really bad shape. It looked like it had measles by the time I finished applying plaster compound. I have almost finished sanding it now that it is dry.

Finally to complete preparation for paint, Bill caulked all of the seams around the windows, doors, and fireplace. It looks substantially better with this small step. Here are pictures of one un-caulked side and a caulked side of the fireplace.

Pre-caulk

Post-caulk