The Satanic Jigsaw Puzzle

A few weeks back we started a project to demolition the back window and door in the living room, replacing them with two new large windows, and covering the entire back wall and fire place with flagstone.

We started with a design of how I wanted the fireplace wall to look using Google Sketchup. Sketchup is a great amateur 3D drafting tool, and I'm so impressed with it I'm working on a new article about it.

I got the new windows installed and three-quarters of the flagstone up, and boy am I glad to be back in the office this week so I can rest. My hands are raw and the blisters have been replaced with open wounds on my finger tips and the heel of my right hand. It's taken nearly two tons of flagstone and countless bags of mortar, but I'm nearly done.

I'm convinced that masonry is a black art. No stones fit anywhere without being chiseled, broken, or cut until my hands were bleeding enough to get a few drops of my lifeblood into the mortar, then things finally started falling into place a little easier. I can see why the ancient pagans mixed the blood of their enemies into the mortar of their fortresses... it is required for someone to lose blood for masonry to be successful!

You would think that out of two tons of flagstone some would actually have edges that would come close to matching up. No so. And they never break where you want them to. One edge goes fine, then you decide to chip one little jagged tip off the other side and the whole stone cracks not in half, but into three, four, or five pieces that are too small to fit or look good anywhere.

If I was doing a gravel production project I could mark this thing as a complete success already. I'll be so happy to get back to woodworking, where things can be cut exactly the way I want them without the utterance of any incantations or sacrifices.

We did a lot of homework before starting this project. Unlike the old days where you just mixed some Portland cement and sand to create mortar, now we have lots of choices in stone and tile adhesives. Some of them are made for attaching porous materials to non-porous, and some are made for porous to porous, and some are designed for non porous to non-porous.

Since the old brick on our fireplace was sealed, we weren't sure which type of thin-set to use at first. We solved that problem by grinding down the surface of the brick and then went with a Mapei stone and tile thin-set, Ultraflex II modified. I'm happy to report that I can lift my entire 240 pound body off the ground while hanging on to one of the flagstones thus applied.

I bought a QEP 8" diamond blade wet saw from Lowe's for $299.00 for this project. While that bridge saw is designed for tile, I'm happy that it does an excellent job of cutting the one and a half inch thick Oklahoma flagstone we are using. Later we will use it to actually cut tile when we re floor our living room and kitchen, then the saw will make some contractor happy when he buys it at half price in my garage sale.