Handy Man

Well Brandon is my handy man. He loves to work on different projects around our house. We have done lots of things to our house since we have moved in and we just finished another project for Valentines Day. Well last Thursday the three of us went to two different stone places to find what we wanted to rock our fireplace with. We found the perfect rock to put on our fireplace and decided that we Brandon would rock our fireplace during his break. However, that night I could hardly wait to put it up so Brandon and I started working on getting the fireplace ready to lay the rock on. It was not finished until Valentines Day because Brandon had a campout Friday night to go on with the young men and Saturday we were able to go out to dinner with Brandon's cousin Aaron and his wife (which was a lot of fun). So after having stuff all over our floor basically since Thursday night we were finally able to enjoy our night on Valentines Day just starring at our newly rocked fireplace. We love it and Brandon did such a good job. :-)

This is what our fireplace looked like before.

After we tore off the little mantle (at like 10:00 p.m on Thursday night) that was on the wall, there was a big hole so we covered it with the drop cloth. If we had not covered it then it would have been freezing in our house in the morning because of the draft coming from the hole.

Then once Brandon got home from school Friday morning we went to work. He put a piece of wood to cover up the hole.

We decided to cover up the inset so putting some wood posts was the first step.

Then we screwed backer board on to those wood pieces to finish closing up the inset.

My job was to completely cover up our fireplace and mantel with tape and plastic bags.

I did such an amazing job! haha

Then Brandon put up the lath and then after getting that secure he started to put up the scratch coat of mortar.

So here is after the scratch coat was up and everything is taped off.

Half way done with putting up the rock!

FINISHED!!!! We love it so much!!

I had to get a picture of the whole wall just to let you see how it all looks! :-)

We love how it turned out. Brandon did such a great job on it and he is proud of his work, and he should be. I am so lucky to have such a wonderful husband! :-) Our Valentines Day was spent finishing this up and it was nice to have it done and cleaned up so we could just enjoy it that night. Brandon also got me some Ralph Lauren perfume for Valentines! He is the best husband a girl could ever ask for. I am the luckiest girl to have such a wonderful husband as well as a wonderful son. I am truly blest!