it's done!

One of our long awaited "projects" is finally completed! I am so proud of Tim and for the way God has gifted him as a "handyman!" :) He is so talented and did such an awesome job on completing our beautiful fireplace! We've had the actual fireplace in for a long time (and have been enjoying cozy wood-burning fires almost every night!) but the stone and mantle were not up yet.
Tim cut and laid all the stone himself. We were blessed by Michael Kanis from church who gave us a BEAUTIFUL walnut beam for our mantle. It weighed about 400 pounds!! Against my suggestion, Tim decided to move this gigantic beam...by himself... down to the basement to stain it and then up to the living room. Yeah, he almost died. Thank goodness no injuries occurred although I have a couple of dents on the staircase wall. :)
The next "mission" was to find a way to actually mount the mantle on the wall. Thanks to Tim's ingenuity as well as him and our friend, Jay Luhmann's, willingness to take a running start across the living room and throw their bodies into the mantle in efforts to get it flush against the wall, the mantle was up but just not where it needed to be. It was quite humorous to watch them sacrifice their bodies this way but also quite painful. After realizing that their bodies were getting bruised and that they really weren't making a difference, they resorted to using a splitting maul to pound it against the wall and this finally worked. Way to go guys!