The fireplace

The finished chef d'oeuvre except for the mantles:
featuring Cécile, Cath, Tassy and Edmond

We thought you might be interested in seeing some of the steps that go into building a field-stone fireplace.

It started with Jean-Marc's fireplace guru - Serge St-Pierre. He took Jean-Marc and me to look at stones in a quarry in Ste-Agathe. Not satisfied with what we found there, Serge sent us off to a couple of other places. We were 'third time lucky' in Mirabel – who knew that field stones could be so different and that finding a ton or three of rocks so very complicated?

Step 1 - The skeleton

A mere 4 tons of field stones

Work began a week ago Thursday - by Friday morning the living room looked a bit like an indoor patio

Monday morning- the patio was larger and Serge (on the right) hard at work.
Note their addition of a vent (with a tip of the hat to Bruce Calhoun)

By the following Friday afternoon, it was all done but the mantles.
This is the dining room side - with the mortar still drying