We are putting in a tile hearth for the wood-burning stove. Right now there's no heat because the furnace hasn't been installed yet, so we have tented off the area where we'll be working to try to warm things up a bit. We are using space heaters and electric blankets to keep the floor and tile warm, since you don't want your thinset or grout to freeze before it has a chance to dry.
We're going to fill the area under the roof in with foam insulation, then cover it with tongue and groove aspen. We will be building the staircase railings ourselves.
Applying the thinset, then the cement board that goes under the tile. In spite of the space heaters, it was pretty cold.
We had cut and laid out the tile before driving up to Colorado, so at least we didn't have to do that on the job site. When we started mixing the thinset, we discovered that we had left the mixing paddle at home, so we ended up mixing with a piece of board. Sometimes you just have to improvise. This was on Thanksgiving afternoon, and of course there were no stores open (actually there are no stores near Cuchara anyway). We made a trip to the hardware store the next day.
After laying out the cement board, we let it dry overnight with several electric blankets on top. We also put the tiles on top of the cement board to get them warmed up for the next day. Then on Friday we laid the tile, and put it to bed with the electric blankets.
It turned out pretty good, it's time to grout!
Linda and I did the grouting, while Don made encouraging noises.
It seems to me that there MUST be an easier way to make sure you get the grout all the way down into the cracks!
We're done, it looks beautiful!
I can't wait to see this with a wood stove sitting on top.
This will be the kitchen, with the mud room behind.
This is the upstairs bathroom, complete with bathtub.
This is the basement. The furnace will be installed in the equipment room (behind the studs). The furnace stores heat in dense ceramic bricks, then releases the heat to warm the house.
The stairs going up from the basement. They have a motion sensor so the garage light comes on whenever someone goes down the stairs.
Another view of the equipment room.
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