Knut’s Masterpiece

I’ve been meaning to post pictures of this since it was finished last week.  I’ve been so full of blogging material that I just have to find a day to fit it in.

This has been a 3 year process.  You may remember, year 1 was the installation of the fireplace.  Knut cut a big whole in the wall of our house just before the snow was going to fly.  He and his dad built a chimney outside our house, and a wood box was installed next to it so wood could be available without dragging the mess through the house each day.  Truly, he has thought of everything.  (You can’t see from the pictures, but he also installed an electrical outlet on top of the mantle so I could plug in Christmas lights without hanging cords, and even cut in a large “plate rail” on top for a decorating idea we had.  More on that in a few days…

So for a year, we used our fireplace and it has been the main source of heat for our house since then.  On the other side of the house we have a corn stove that is used often as well, and we have a tank in the back of the house that is used to keep the pipes from freezing when we’re on vacation.

It was very industrial looking at first, and we spent many evenings debating over how to spruce it up the next year.  I had my own ideas of what I wanted it to look like, and I soon realized that this project consumed his thoughts more than mine and he was determined in his own ideas. 

The next year, Knut picked out stones from various piles around our fields.  Doing the stonework himself, these stones that were in our living room for many weeks were placed layer by layer up on the fireplace.  He would only do one layer a day so that the mortar could set before the weight of the next layer was installed.  It was a tediously slow process.

He was planning on doing the mantle that same year, but he hit a bump in that plan.  You see, he found these great posts in the barn that used to be the old porch posts to the house.  So he cut them down to size to fit the fireplace.  He measured and measured, started cutting the molding, and came up against a big problem.  The posts that he wanted to put molding around were warped from being so old.  They twisted ever so slightly.  The angles were all askew.

So for the next year or so, whenever Knut was in the living room, he would sit and stare at the mantle.  He read woodworking books to find different solutions to the problem and debated in his head what the best route would be.  Can we say: perfectionist?

Really, fixing up a house is a journey and we have no rush to it.  The number of things Knut learned in this project is inspiring.  It was a really, really fun 3 year journey and we are so happy with the results.

Since we don’t have snow yet this year, he’s spent all his free time post-harvest and post-wood-pile-stacking working on the mantle.  Finally one night, he had me help hold them up and fit the molding pieces tightly together.  He even let me use the fancy compressed air nail gun from the shop a few times.

The next day he painted it to match the posts.  Most of the woodwork in the house is stained, not painted.  However, since the posts were so aged (and originally painted white) we agreed that staining wouldn’t be the best route for them and we wanted the molding to match the posts.

The molding for the wood box came from scraps his dad left in the summer kitchen (aka shed by the driveway) when his parents did a remodel when Knut was little.  They were also kind of beat up so they got a paint job as well.  The inspiration for the molding for the fireplace came from the molding found in the antique doors to the 3 season porch.

 So who is more excited that it’s DONE!?!!  I’m not sure.  It’s a pretty close tie over here.  It’s amazing that ever since we got the fireplace, a room that was virtually unused by us in this house is now the most used.  The whole family is constantly in there.  Knut and I are trying really hard to get the kids to start calling it “the parlor” instead of “the living room.”  So far, no luck.  That won’t stop Knut and I from calling it that, though!