Monthly Archive

C: They totally all agree with me.
M: They do not!  Plenty of people agree with me.
C: Your people are so outnumbered by my people.  The consensus is that the rough stone looks funny.
M: A few crazy people agreeing with you does not mean a consensus.
C: Oh, I’m so going to tell them that you called them crazy.
M: You won’t even notice the difference between rough and smooth once a big, black woodstove is in front of that anyway.  It will totally break it up.
C: I will notice.  I will always notice. And it will drive me crazy every single day.
M: This is so ridiculous.  This was the plan!  Why change the plan?
C: Because the plan was flawed.  I’m a visual person.  I need to see it before I can make a decision.  And once I saw it I knew it was wrong.
M: You know, it doesn’t matter anyway because we don’t have enough stone to cover the whole thing right now.
C: We don’t?
M: No.
C: Really?  There’s so much granite out there.
M: Really.  We’ve only got about a quarter of what we need.  I did the math.
C: So we need to either keep scavenging granite or come up with a totally new idea regardless?
M: Yeah.
C: *frown*
M: *grump*
C: Let’s go get some ice cream.
M: Okay. 

Long, long ago in a granite field far, far away, we spent so much time wandering around chunks of beautiful stone that Cherie was late to her college reunion.  And when we finally showed up, it was in a low-riding truck filled to the brim with granite.  Do we know how to be the hit of the party or what?

But never mind!  We got a great deal on a lot of granite to serve as the woodstove surround.  And that granite has spent the last year here:

Holding down the porch.

Perfect!  Just like we planned!

If you remember from way back when, that there big slab of granite is actually a countertop remnant.  It was roughly the size we needed, but it obviously needed to be cut to fit.  It took us all winter to catch up with a friendly mason willing to take on such a small job, but Michael finally arranged to borrow an hour of his time on a weekend morning.  So Michael made a template:

And they started cutting.

Sadly, we have no photos of the cutting process because Cherie was gone and Michael had to help the mason.  The whole process only took about half an hour, which is amusing considering it took us a year to get him there.  But you'll just have to trust us that there was a mason.  Actually, you won't have to trust us because we have proof:

Next came the cement board:

(We stuffed some insulation behind it to help keep the hot water pipes, well, hot.)

You'll clearly see our plan for the back of the surround here.  The small pieces of granite will follow the stairs and then be mirrored on the other side.

We set some of the back pieces of granite around to give us a sense for how it will look. 

And, well…

Cherie thinks it looks…funny somehow.  Something about the rough-cut pieces of the back set against the smooth, sharp-edged floor piece isn't working for her.

Unsurprisingly, Michael thinks Cherie is off her rocker.

So, we ask.  What do you think?

Yay or nay?

If this doesn't work out we'll just…um…well…we don't really have a back-up plan.  So there's no pressure or anything.  Just because we are asking you to save our house, and our marriage, and our sanity.

No, really.  What do you think?