End of day one

Well, here it is at 1:45 am, and hubby and I are getting ready to clean up and go to bed.

It's been a LOOOOONG day!

We were fortunate that Jameson let us *sleep-in until 9:00 this morning.

* meaning he comes in our room about 10 times and asks us if he can have a snack, have some milk, watch cartoons, play on the computer...but we don't actually have to get UP.

Once we got up and ate some breakfast, hubby went to work on the fireplace project.

The majority of the daylight hours were spent prepping the floor for the hearth tile.

However, we (Marty) didn't lay that tile because then he wouldn't be able to walk on it for a few days and he wasn't ending this day without some rock on that wall!

Here's the first globs of mortar going down.....

And now, the first rock is placed.....

***LAAAAAAAAA***

(That's the sound of the angels singing in Heaven...lol)

After a few hours, the first three rows were done....

Then after a few more hours, 2/3 of the legs were finished.

Now here is where Marty decided to call it a night....

We can officially say the "bottom" of the fireplace is now complete!

The pictures really don't do the rock justice.  The flash highlights all of the mortar joints that you cannot see in real life and we also still have all of the spacers and shims in place to hold the rock where it needs to be overnight.

Hopefully, from here until completion, it should be a much more simple process.....

Except for the arch and the keystone.....

But I'm not going to think about that for now....

I DO want to actually get some sleep tonight!