Fireplace remodel: End of day 2 1/2

This fireplace remodel is driving me crazy!

How do people remodel NECESSARY rooms (Like Kitchens, Bathrooms) and remain sane?

We are just adding rock around our fireplace, and I am about to loose my mind!

I swear, my living room looks like a rock quarry exploded!

There is mortar, rock, dust, sand everywhere!

Anyway, of course this remodel is taking about a million times longer than we thought it would. If anything could go wrong, it has....

The story of our life.

Today's drama centered around the fact the the gorgeous corbels that I bought to go with the mantle are too thick.....they stick out past the front of the mantle.

After going over 100 different scenarios, and spending an hour in Lowe's, we came up with a solution. We are hoping that our fix will work as we hoped!

Stay tuned to see if it does!

Because of hubby's work schedule, he can't do any rock work during the week, so progress has been limited to weekends.

So, here are the results at the end of day 2 1/2 (one full day yesterday and a partial day today....he has to work tonight, so today was cut short):

The mantle will stained (hopefully) to match our cabinets.  He just has the mantle and corbel temporarily up there to get good measurements for the supports and the rock.

The keystone and the arch took forever to complete, but I think it turned out fantastic!

We are praying that everything else from here on out will be smooth sailing.

But you know how that goes....lol!