A burning desire to wrap-up our last big house project

We seem to be getting closer to the truth with our fireplace project. When we moved into our new condo in September, we sought and got approval to extend a gas line over to an area of the loft where we wanted to install a new gas fireplace. After we got settled in, we contacted a contractor we had worked with in our previous property, as well as a local fireplace showroom, to get the ball rolling. Our intent was to have the fireplace installed and finished by Thanksgiving. "No problem," we were assured.

Let's see...what's today's date?

To be fair, we have made progress as you can see in the series of photos above. But it's been a path of mis-steps and delays, including weeks of waiting for the City of Boston to process the approval certificate for the project. Once our paperwork was in place, our carpenter built-out the fireplace framework several inches wider than the agreed-upon architectural plans, which meant we had to go back and order more stone for the wrap-around. Then once the burner unit was put in, we had the little issue of a leaky gas valve. And did I mention that when the contractor finally got here to put on the stonefront (on January 2nd), the stone he and his coworker lugged up here to the fifth floor was the wrong color? They gamely repacked all of the stone and promised to correct the mistake, and they did, but now we are looking at a stone install date of January 19-20.

Here is the good news...we've been able to use the fireplace for several weeks now. And Peter did an awesome job picking out the burner unit. He did his due diligence and selected a unit that not only throws off great heat but looks like an actual woodburning fireplace.

And so while it may not yet look as pretty as it will (hopefully) very soon, we DO have a working fireplace, just like we had planned. I will look forward to letting you know when we finally put a big, fat checkmark next to "get fireplace installed" on our to-do list.