We knew going into this project, the whole cabin needed to be re-leveled, including the fireplace. All the local contractors said, "take the fireplace down, and start over". I was stubborn and wanted to save the brick fireplace. So, I called in a foundation company from the big city. They were confident that it could be saved. After all, engineers were involved, what could possibly go wrong, right?
If you look at the base of the fireplace, you can see the right side is sinking.
I'm no engineer, but this doesn't look safe!
After jacking up (no pun intended) the fireplace, the interior bricks started to bulge out. Work was stopped immediately as the foundation company was afraid the fireplace would collapse. They told us that we would have to take the bricks down, then call them back out to finish the leveling...what?!?!
Our plan was to take the bricks down one by one. Hubby wanted to see how hard and time consuming this task was going to be, so he decided to chisel out the first brick. He told me it wasn't going to be as hard as he thought. So, I headed to the store to pick up tarps to protect the floor.
Shorty after leaving, I received this picture in a text message! The caption said, "no one got hurt". Apparently, Hubby got to the 4th brick on the top row and the whole thing came crashing down! Thank God, nobody was standing in front of it. We won't discuss the large divots in the wood laminate floor or the amount of dust that covered every square inch of the cabin. Can you see the daylight coming in? During the leveling and collapse, the firebox, bricks and flue were damaged. The entire thing had to come down.
Good thing I went to the store to purchase those tarps! We tarped the fireplace as best as we could. It took 2 months before work could begin.
Check back to see the construction of the new stack stone fireplace!
Whoah. Good thing it was only the floor. Thanks for sharing!
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