Partway through hearth project

[GeneralBill]

Sadly, the new Summit has been cold for a few months as the hearth behind it gets rebuilt. I am continuing on an idea I posted a few months back. The stove is in an interior corner and it had a 7' 45 degree false wall behind it. New code made me push that wall back a few feet. I could have just removed it and finished up the 90 degree wall, but instead thought to try a few things.

The new wall is just 42 inches wide and instead of the old rough brick, I'm using 3/4 inch oak plywood with large fir cross sections mounted as decorations. We had an 8' diameter (2' bark, 6' wood) fir tree logged (now I regret that!) and I cut a few slabs at crosscut from the stump. Parts of this and a few 30" cuts will mount on the oak.

The other aspect is I am opening an interior heat channel to the master bedroom. The angled wall will be open on top and bottom and there will be a door in the bedroom to open up the air access to the "triangular room" made by the false wall. Cold air can fall down to the stove and the stove warmed air will trickle into the MB. We can close this channel when we want to block noise. That's the thought anyway.

I'm posting pics of the slabs, ran out of space, will post the stove area and the MB in a reply.

- Bill

 

[GeneralBill]

I should mention that the wood is still unfinished. Also that the large fir had huge growth rings. Some as much as 7/8 inch. A visiting forestry prof said he had never seen such large rings. Though the tree was 8' in diameter, it was only about 112 feet high and the same in years. The local Indians used to have yearly burns to promote a root crop (Camas). When the settlers arrived, they thought the fire was an act of war and wiped out the Indians. The prof said this tree was the mother tree and probably seeded the hillside after the burning stopped.

The pics are of the area behind the stove and the corresponding corner of the bedroom. Behind the stove is a 42" 2x4 on a ladder to simulate the wall position. You can see an open wall cavity in the corner, that will be the new air exchange. This is also visible on the master bedroom pic, though the fact that a 14.5" by 7' opening exists in the corner is not as apparent.

- Bill