There's No Turning Back Now

The weather finally broke from the wintery cycle we've been stuck in long enough for Joe to begin work on the project. Unfortunately the break wouldn't last long.

Joe and Steve got an early start Monday morning intent on getting all of the holes dug for the footings for an inspection later in the day. Bald tires on Steve's Bobcat and a rock of behemoth proportions slowed the pace some. Joe worked well beyond sunset Tuesday night to try and get as much done as he could in anticipation of another large snowfall forecast for Wednesday. The snow missed us for the most part but wet conditions will keep the project on hold until Monday.

I spoke with Karen on Tuesday and she said that Bob came home and commented on our project saying "there's no turning back now". I had to laugh because he's so right. We're committed.

I've been in touch with Karen regularly as we kick around ideas for the south wall of the sun-porch. Keith came up with a design that I really like a lot but she had some reservations about it. Her concerns were with the height of the stacked-stone surrounding the fireplace. Typically the stone is either capped at a level considerably lower or taken all the way to the ceiling. You can see from Keith's drawing that he has it stopping at a point somewhere in between which to me feels just fine.

With Karen's concerns in mind I did an image search online to find something similar to what Keith has designed and found that she is absolutely right. Something other than the norm is very rare indeed but after a couple of hours spent searching through hundreds of images and coming close to giving up I came across this photo. It's almost exactly what we're looking to do. This can definitely work for us and Karen likes it a lot too!

Video from the first week of progress...