Just how combustable is foam anyway?

Ok, so after some web surfing it seems I'm not as insane as DH thought I was. Either that, or I'm in good company.

I found this example of a foam fireplace insert online, along with an entire field of architectural foam products. Expensive, but very very cool.

This little guy here was selling for $630. A little over budget if you ask me.

A few links I've found woith some very cool aspects are www.foamsupply.com and www.foamdesigncenter.com for starters, but there are myriad others.

I guess the place to start off with on the fireplace is the beginning....




















Oh yes, how godawful that was. The fake brick trim, the crappy wood moulding stapled to the wall. Gives me the ugh-shivers just thinking about it.

That and the carpeting. ew.

The the accidental discovery of the brick arch under forty pounds of plaster is what started this all off. Who knows what we'd have there now if it weren't for my overzealous demolition.














I *thought* and I use that word cautiously now, considering the mess I'm in now.... that I wanted a fireplace similar to the one designed below. Just a simple two-column sides with a horizontal cap piece across the top.















Unfortunately, I've been seeing these go for about $300 on the low end to over $2000 locally for wood mantles, and frankly, they just wouldn't fit right.

Even the historically accurate ones I've found pulled from homes in the area just don't look right. I mean, it seems a shame to put this much effort into rebuilding this home from the inside out and end up putting this on the fireplace:




















I think these above were for sale for $100 each. Instead, we bought two nine foot high flat foam columns, cut them in half to fit in the car, and added a six window sill foam trim for the horizontal piece.

Here are the leftovers from the cuts made to fit the height under the sill. We had to cut a middle section out of each of the pieces. The column pieces are on the left, the sill is to the right, and the bottom footer was waaay too tall, so I cut off a good 5" off of the bottom and scribed the base to fit around the uneven brick and wood flooring it was to sit on.

We realized very quickly that the sill was not level. They are built for exterior trim, and hence slope outwards to drain rainwater off. We'd have to shim up the final cap piece and cover the gap with trim.

I was going to need to attach a 5' long board across the top of the fireplace to attach the foam sill to. I also cut out 2 smaller blocks with the profile of the sill for each end of the sill to extend back to the wall. I just took the middle piece of sill I'd cut out from the middle and drew the outline on a piece of paper, cut it out and laid it over a 2x6, drew the outline and cut. There's a picture down here somewhere.

We decided on leaving a 1/2" of drywall to the left and right of the foam columns to give the impression of more depth, but there was a bigger problem that needed addressing first.

The inside gap to the brick face from the foam was over 3", and the foam column extended in past the drywall by an easy 6". We'd need to build a brace for the inside of the columns.

I plumbed up the columns and attached them with a few screws to the drywall behind, then marked a line on the brick where the foam would need support. I thencut eight 4" pieces of scrap 2x4 and drilled holes in the center of each.

Then I placed the 2x4 blocks on the brick, next to a 2x6 on it's side which was edged up to the line I'd drawn. This was the line I couldn't cross, or it would muck up the trim that I'd need to use to cover all this mess up.

I then found the center of a brick and drilled a hole through the pre-drilled block. Once the holes were drilled, I put construction adhesive on the backside of the pre-drilled block and tapconned it to the brick face. I did this four times on each side; one each at the top and bottom, one midway up the base, and one very specifically where the two cut pieces of the column would meet in the middle, near the top.

Once these eight blocks were in place, I measured the gap at each location, cut a 2x6 to fit the gap and nailgunned the supporting 2x6 pieces to the attached 2x4 blocks to make an 'L-bracket' behind the columns.














Here you can see clearly where the cuts were made and how the foam is attached to the wall, as well as the small detailed wood cut on the side. (The window sill trim is about half the thickness of the columns, it needed to be padded.)

Next, I screwed the insides of the foam columns to the L-brackets





















Then came the bondo.

OK, these foam things are not meant to be cut apart and reassembled. They are not even, not exacting, and not even close to matching up. There was some serious sanding needed to get the top and bottom pieces to match up.














But once the screw holes were filled, and the connecting gaps filled and sanded, as well as matching up the side of the sill with the wood cut outs behind, then I needed to cap it off with a piece of poplar.

After routing out a decorative trim on three of the sides of the poplar cap, it was time to shim it out to level to accommodate for the slope from the sill. We nailed the 1x6 poplar board down in the back (closest to the wall) to the 2x6 horizontal board I attached the sill to. Then we levelled out the cap and put shims in.














Once all the shims were in place, we marked them, pulled them out, wrapped them in tape, and cut them back on the table saw. I didn't want to take any chances of snapping them off in place, or accidentally cutting the foam with a blade.

Then we pushed a lot of the construction adhesive into the gap, replaced the shim bundles into their places, and brad nailed the cap down into the shims.

The I found a spare piece of quarter round trim lying around and cut it to fit and brad nailed that in too.

Now I'm off to Home Depot to find another length of quarter round so I can finish the sides. :-)














Oh, and a quick word on bondo that sets up faster than you can spread it smoothly: *&$%#@!$!.

Thank you.














Oh, and just in case the brad nails didn't hold down the cap through the shims into the foam, we put books on top until the glue dries.

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I'm building a fireplace mantle

And of course, to do it in any normal, stable manner would just be out of the question. No, I wanted columns and go-gahs, but to buy all that trim and put it together like normal people have done for decades? No, not me.

I went to the Covington Reuse Center (the place we got all of our closet doors) and bought some weird exterior foam trim stuff that I'd been eyeing for months. I know that the original purpose of this stuff is that you somehow slap it on the outside of one of these new "I can build you a new home in 7 days or less" monstrosities and it's supposed to look all castle-y.

This is either going to be very cool, or really really stupid. I'm taking pictures. I'm just hoping I didn't waste $100.

Time... and bondo... will tell.

Backtracking: Taking the fireplace down

I was just reminded of the story of the fireplace removal. We actually took the fireplace down back in March, 2008, but I never made a post about it.

I've been remiss long enough.

We decided pretty early on that we wanted to take down the back fireplace. This is the one that used to be an exterior fireplace before they built onto the home in (we're guessing here) about 1900. Since we knew we couldn't afford to have both of our fireplaces repaired for safe use, (the other one's in the Dining room to the front of the house, where it remains) we figured we could use the space.

Actually I was hoping to have the entire thing-- all of the bricks-- removed leaving just a big open space between the living room and the kitchen on the first floor, and between the office area and the hallway on the second, but that wasn't to be.

Here's where we started:

Up on the third floor, where the two rooflines

met, the gable roof and the shed roof, that's where the chimney poked through.

This is also where, over the years, the water was getting into the house. The water damage was incredible.

The plaster was popping off, and the bricks underneath, after 140 years of absorbing moisture, were flaking apart. If we didn;t take it down, it would have continued to crumble and eventually it would have taken itself down.

The roofers started the process by knocking down the exterior chimney to just under the roofline. Then they built the roof right over the hole. A complex procedure, if you ask me, getting all of those angles to meet up just right.

The we had to reinforce the roofline. (This is the same wall as the above picture after most of the plaster was removed. We left some because, as we were taking it off we realized just how soft the brick had become. In some cases, the plaster was holding the brick together.

The next part was to take down the remaining brick, so we brought in our go-to guy, Zach.

Zach was optimistic, but cautious. We weren't sure how structural the fireplace was to the wall between the original brick house and the add on fifty years later.

For a couple of hundred dollars he said he'd take down the brick for us, but before we did that, we decided to to a little 'spur of the moment' investigatory probing.

Starting in what is now our living room, (actually, to be more specific, this area is now our closet. See pic from at the end of the previous Doorbell post) Zach poked a small hole in the wall in the center of the fireplace. There was a hearth on both sides of this fireplace, btw.

It was a small hole. About the size of a silver dollar. Zach got a small flashlight and peered into the hole, squinting to see something past the brick opening.

Visualize now, Zach leaning in, peering into the abyss, one eye shut, one eye squinting hard... with both of us hovering in, leaning in behind him... as if by leaning in *hard*, we would suddenly trigger our x-men x-ray vision abilities, and be able to see *through* Zach and into the wall where even he couldn't.

Then it happened.

Zach snapped up his head in an instant just when a poof of greasy coal dust shot out of the hole right into his face like a sideways and filthy Old Faithful. Looking like perfect caricature of Al Jolsen, Zach wiped his face with his handkerchief... and kept digging.

For at least three to four weeks afterwards, this picture above of the hole in the fireplace wall was the cleanest this place ever was. After this picture, hell broke loose.

You see, Zach went all commando on the fireplace brick just after this picture was taken. This small investigatory hole at the *bottom* of a 140 year old fireplace was just the beginning. It wasn't that the hole got much bigger, it probably ended up being about a 8' x 12" hole by the time he called it quits. It was one hundred and forty one years of soot that really put the damper on the whole "what happened to my clean worksite?" thing.

I do not have a picture of what happened next. I think I was in shock. Slowly, the soot began to cloud out of the hole and Zach started scooping piles of soot out of the hole and onto the floor, where it poofed into much larger clouds. Soon, we weren't able to see five feet in front of us. Then three..

That's when I bailed and ran outside.

That's when 300 pounds of soot came down the chimney and out that little hole. It went black inside the house.

Into my house.

My previously clean house.

When the black greasy clouds started coming out the front door, that was enough. I went home.

I left the boys to clean up THEIR mess. They didn't say a word, I think they knew.

I'll tell you, it was EVERYWHERE. Months afterward we were still using 2x4's with sooty footprints on them. Luckily, the soot was heavy and didn't could up to the second floor of the house, but the first floor-- all rooms, all surfaces, all tools, all lumber, all walls, everything was covered with greasy soot.

This spontaneous peek into the fireplace innards precluded any preparation to cover anything anywhere else in the house.

After the boys shoveled all 300lbs. of soot into garbage bags and into the dumpster, (it took a full 2 days of work) then I returned to the house with a bottle of Dawn dish detergent, a bottle of ammonia, and a mop. I just hosed the d@mn floors down.

There was still soot on the floors on the first floor until we sanded it off.

In the meantime, the brick came down smoothly. Most of the brick was not salvageable, but a large portion was, and it was neatly stacked in the basement for future use on, oh, maybe bricking in a door to become a window. :-)












Once Zach got to the second floor, things were going fine. The bricks were coming down quick and without any problems.

Here's the second floor fireplace after the face of the bricks were removed. You can see the chimney pipe holes in two different locations (one for the fireplace facing forward, and one hearth facing backwards. All of the different chimney paths were bricked in, and it looked kinda cool. I'd ignorantly thought that chimneys were just big gaping holes that went straight up to the roof with a damper, but not so.

There were at least four different channels, one for each hearth, going up to the roof. The neat thing is that it made a great place to run wires and plumbing.

Just remember to plug the holes for firebreaks.

Then we moved on to the first floor - oh yeah, remember to work your way DOWN from the TOP. Zach told us a story about a house he had been working on where they started talking the chimney down from the bottom. The base of the chimney weakened, and when the three stories-worth of brick collapsed in on itself and landed in the basement, I don't think even the insurance covered the mess that was left.

On the first floor, we had planned on taking down a lot more brick, but Zach put the brakes on when he noticed a change in the brick layout. Opting for safety and structural soundness over space, we stopped the chimney demo.

The space we took back would be enough for a small closet once we patched up the hole in the floor, and we had to accept that this would have to be enough.

The inside of the closet remains a somewhat odd trapezoid, but heck, that's what closets are made for: hiding your mistakes.

In the last picture, below, you can see the place where we patched up the chimney hole in the basement, right where we plan on running the wire up into the closet for our doorbell ringer.



So, yes, we removed a large portion of our fireplace, but seeing as it was on a structural wall in the middle of the house, we couldn't remove the whole thing and leave a space. We had to maintain the integrity of what once was an exterior wall, and leave a large portion of the brick intact.

I think it worked out ok.

Except for the soot part.

That sucked.

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A piece of good news - the fireplace.

The old "livingroom" which will now be our dining room has always had a tacky fireplace in it. The mantle was made of crappy mismatched trim board, had 1/4" fake brick (yes, FAKE brick) facade and a gruesome glass and metal front.


We've been avoiding touching it for almost a year now.

But now that we're finishing up the furring in the new dining room, we decided to fur in the fireplace as well.

By this time, the mantle and the plaster were long gone. (The original picture is from before we bought the house. Love the carpet, no?) All that was left to do was to attach the 2x4's flat to the wall and basically encapsulate the fireplace.

I started by attaching two 2x4's together to make my corners and attached them to each side of the fire place.

Then I tore out was the metal grate. It loosened the fake bricks. So I pulled them all off. That took some of the plaster with it. So I kept going.

Eventually, the room was filled with dust, my cleavage filled with sand, and an hour later, I noticed this cool brick archway.

So THAT'S what was under there all these years.

I'm gonna keep it.

Removal of the fireplace?

Novel idea:

You've got a 144 year old home with two fireplaces. One has been used recently (on the West wall) although probably shouldn't have been, and the second is in the center of the home, sealed up for probably 50 years or so, unworkable and unusable. So why keep it?

Very exciting recommendation from our architect: if you're gutting the place, why not take down the fireplace bricks, fix the roof, and use the 144 year old bricks on another project? Since the basement access is currently ONLY from the exterior of the house, could we maybe use this new unused space where the fireplace WAS on the first floor to access the basement from inside the house? Hubby thinks a trap door concept would be cool, and I tend to agree, if it's workable.


It could also open up the second floor quite a bit, (see image) where we plan on having the Master Bed, Bath and office space.

The real question is whether or not this is a structural load bearing wall. If so, plans may be of naught. The green outline in the image is of the original construction. The addition to the North (3 floors of an addition) were added on later on (not sure how much later) but it's clear that the wall that the second fireplace is on was once an exterior wall.

I'd love to clear out the whole area, but not sure if we can do it.

In other news, it looks like we've got a deal on the rehab loan. After many weeks of negotiating with our banker, we've finally come to a meeting of the minds... and wallets. M is thrilled.

Update: We did take down the fireplace... partially, but the design we went with is NOT the one from above. We moved the bathroom from the West side of the house to the East side of the house, so as to have a straight hallway down the west wall, instead of the 'rabbit warren' hallway hubby referred to it as.

It's a minor adjustment I didn;t think we'd be able to make at first due to the plumbing, but our plumber assured us he could do it, so we did.
H.