wsherrick wrote:Smokeyja wrote:joeq wrote:And you "officially" deserve it. Beautiful job Josh. Can't wait to see the finished product. Think noon tomorrow is too much to ask?
Haha thanks man! Unfortunately I need to go to work again tomorrow
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It seems really hard to level the concrete perfectly. Masonry isn't my trade and this is the first time I've ever done this. I used quickcretes pro finish crack resistant concrete.
I guess the fine tune leveling can come into play with the mortar.
now I need to pick out the exact stone and brick and then choose to use the same color mortar as the original or match the masonry up with something different. Here is a photo of the original colors in the house
This is a clean shot of the upper half of the double chimney I'm working on right now.
Here is the other terricotta lined two flue chimney in the house this in the kitchen . This chimney will have the cook stove on it .
Btw the colors are very similar and I have the sample bags of mortar I am just wondering of it will be too beige with the stones or not and I might want to use a darker mortar for the bricks I choose. I'm open to suggestions .
The original builders of the house would be shocked to see the chimney bricks exposed inside. The picked the rough bricks for the chimney because nobody was supposed to ever see them. Originally the chimney was plastered over smooth along with the rest of the wall. Originally you had a small coal fireplace with a cast iron box and hanging grate in there. I've lived in many houses with them and used them too. In humble houses the hearth was smooth mortar and painted. In better houses the hearth and fireplace surround was always, always, always, the best tile that the home builder could afford. Never did they expose raw bricks. Just a little history lesson to maybe help you figure out something.
Hey William , I remember you telling me about the history when I first came on this forum
of course you would know better than me about te different characteristics of period homes but this house confuses me all the time. You think one thing but then it turns out to be wrong and I think it would have been just some local farm hands putting this one together. If I could only get a hold of a few old photos!
I know the main double flue chimney on the oldest part of the house was covered in lime/horse hair plaster because I took it all off , upstairs and downstairs . I don't like the look of plastered over brick. The chimney that was added later in the kitchen looks to have always been exposed. The flue in the original part of the house on the second floor looks to be original as well and there is no evidence of a fireplace ever there. Now on the main floor where I'm doing the hearth I have no idea exactly what they had there but I can tell you that the hearth that was there was not as old as the chimney it looks like maybe they added the open fireplace in 1923 or did something with it at least. The evolution of that chimney is crazy! This was a simple very small farm house on an old chicken farm . I believe it was a farm hand house and that there was only a kitchen outside on the old foundation . There did no evidence of a kitchen inside prior to 1923 at least that I can find. The house was originall about 600sq ft I believe . I can assume some period things were correct but the more I dig into it the more I doubt some things. A lot of the construction looks to have used scrap wood or left overs or reuse. The house was probably built for the farm workers to sleep in . It was a very large worker farm. One of the neighbors was a child and remembers the house when his memory is good... It comes and goes because he is about 90 something . I still have yet to find any old photos. But I will tell you this, I'm getting rid of the sunroom and putting something up that looks and functions better.
I think I am going to try and keep it rustic and farm like as much as I can .
Thanks for all the help guys I still have a lot more to go!
Although thinking about it . If I did a thick plaster job on the bricks Inbetween two pillars and painted it white that might look good... Thoughts thoughts
Hope you find that baseburner your looking for!
We went up one Christmas and all the pipes were frozen and what a foul mood he was in hahahhaa. I went in the old fieldstone basement and stuffed insulation in all the gaping holes to the outside New York State sub-zero winter air. He took it all out!
whoda thunk it 