Fireplace - Part 4

It was sometime in early July that the bricks were finished, the lintel secured and the wooden supports were removed. This made pointing the bricks much easier as access inside was no longer blocked by wood, and there was no longer a fear of the lintel falling on my head!
For the pointing, I mixed 7 parts sand to one part cement and it came out a better match to the original; more sand-coloured than the grey-coloured mortar I had used to secure the bricks. The pointing was applied with a small trowel and was relatively quick to do, it only took a couple of hours to do and a day or so to dry.

Our friend turned up to help us with the hearth. He made a wooden mold for the shape and he cut the laminate floor to size. He then mixed concrete 1 25kg bag of ballast to a few shovels of cement. The mixture needed to be quite dry in order to set more quickly. Half way through we realised we didn't have enough ballast, and the shops had shut, so we mixed in a 25kg bag of sand to bulk it up so we would have enough mixture.
The mix was then poured into the mold and smoothed and made level and left to dry. It was about 72 hours before the hearth was dry enough for the mold to be removed and the hearth was firm enough to stand on.

There are lots of regulations about hearths if you wish to have a real fire or stove in your fireplace. Thankfully as we only intend to burn candles we didn't need to worry about these regulations.

Lastly, here is the hearth with the tiles laid out ready to be tiled:

27th August 2015