DIY Chimney

So this summer, we had the project of re-bricking part of Blaine's parents' chimney. It was hard work. The flue in the chimney was cracked and it was causing the bricks to erode. It also decreases the efficiency of the chimney and is health and fire risk. It was a lot cheaper to do it on our own. So we gave it a try.

Pictures before we started our task:

Blaine had to knock down all the bricks. That took forever. I stayed out of the way until he was done. The next day, we had to pick up all the brick and little shards. They were everywhere! We had to haul the bricks into the back of the Yukon. Again, it was hard work. When we went to dump the bricks at the landfill, we realized we picked up close to 1,500 lbs of brick! 

We worked on the chimney before we went to Boston. It was going a lot slower than expected. We watched YouTube videos to look up tips on how the experts do it. There's a reason masons go through 3-5 years of an apprenticeship. It's so much harder than it looks! We tried working on it on some days, but due to the crazy heat wave, couldn't stand to be up there for more than 20 minutes. It was at least 109 degrees on the roof. Not good. So we decided to wait after the heat wave passed by. Blaine's dad helped us after realizing that we were struggling. It's crazy how one more person can speed up the process so much more.We had on our little system going, and it worked out fine. We had to let all the concrete or whatever it was dry and then go clean the bricks. That was so tedious! But Blaine and Keith did most of that. 

I had this system of getting bricks up on the roof. We would put them in a bucket and pull them up with a rope. Keith thought that wasn't fast enough, so he threw bricks at Blaine. I tried throwing them up there once, and I barely made it. I'm lucky that no windows were broken. 

After a long long time, we finally had it done. It's not the most professional-looking chimney but I don't think it looks too bad! It's functional and that's what matters! I hope this skill won't be something we'll ever have to use again one day, but we definitely learned a lot. I think the biggest lesson for Blaine was that he never wants to do manual labor for a living!

Don't you love the hat?