Management Chair: bluestone

It turns out that these two stone options which we like are both sold as 6"x24" tiles with glue backing holding the pieces together. They cost $12 @ sq. ft. and we need to cover approximately 64 Square Feet.

I am told this one is probably slate. The hearthstone is a honed and polished bluestone or slate - we still need to get the hearthstone.

And this one is something like quartzite or some other stone. Dunno what for sure, but it isn't bluestone.

One advantage of this stuff is that because it comes as tiles it can be installed as tile with quick set tile adhesive, so we we can have our tile guy do it and won't need to hire a stone mason -- and that is a good thing because the last thing I want is to have to find and deal with yet another contractor. What we spend on the tile we will probably save on the install.

There is still a lot to do on the house, but on the top two floors we have finally come to the point where we need to pick out surface finishes (as evidenced by all the recent posts about flooring tile and hardwood. Despite being at that point, we are putting off a lot of finish work and trying to just focus on those elements of the house that need to be finished before we can get a C of O (the Certificate of Occupancy is the Building Department's stamp of approval for people to occupy a building and a prerequisite for getting normal homeowners' insurance and a mortgage). So, for instance, we don't actually have to put down flooring to get the C of O. Instead, we are allowed to just paint the floors and then put down rugs - which is probably what we will do in the bedroom and living room.

However, there are certain places where putting down the finishes is necessary to get the C of O. Examples: (1) we need a working bathroom but you can't use an untiled shower so we have to tile the shower and we might as well tile the rest of the bath while we're at it; (2) we need a working kitchen but you cannot have a stove in a room without fire-rated sheetrock walls and ceiling so we have to decide what kind of stove ventilation and lighting we will use in the kitchen because vent and lighting rough elements must be installed before the sheetrock goes up.

And then there is the fireplace. Although we are not required to have a working fireplace to get a C of O, it is a priority for us since we want the extra heat source so we can avoid big bills from using the electric baseboard heating. It will be easy enough to have a fireplace installed since we are going to have a woodstove insert fireplace - all we have to do is call the store and have them come out and install the chimney liner and the stove of our choice. The problem is that we don't want to pay to install the nice new fireplace insert before we have finished the fireplace surround/hearth. Otherwise, we risk that the insert will have to be removed before the veneer is done or, worse, the insert could get damaged.

Here is the fireplace we need to finish:

Although we don't have photos of what it looked like before the fire, the bottom surface of the fireplace and the bench/ledge in front is a large bluestone slab so we assume the whole thing was faced in a bluestone veneer. We have discussed just going with that again but, as with most things, the word "just" has no place in this process. There are dozens of different shades of bluestone and even more styles of veneer.

Here are some examples: