Fireplace Rebuild pt2

[Music] all right good morning you guys it's the start of day two and I don't know what's gonna happen let's just get going [Music] and boom now you got a rock [Music] if you're just tuning in on the last video we demoed a giant two-story fireplace and we can remove all of the rock off of them and now we're gonna start putting it back together this is a lightweight artificial rock that you sometimes see at zoos and amusement park I don't honestly I don't know it if I remember right they're four by eight or something like that or much bigger and boom now you got a rock guys I'm gonna jump in here because I know we're using this stuff on my fireplace but I see absolutely so much potential with this stuff to cover up ugly retaining walls if you've got a retaining wall that's structurally fine but just uglier than a mud duct and you want to cover it up this stuff will go up in a jiffy we opt to start at the top and work our way down because Frankie's still doing some detail work on the bottom of the fireplace and so we've got to get these big sheets all the way up and through the house all right to make handling these big bulky sheets easier the boys have folded them over and they're just using ratchet straps and then they'll use it like a handle pretty simple they're not heavy it's just balking [Music] and some of you are probably noticing we didn't end up using the strap sandals at I don't know where I'm going but don't want to know what predictable laugh is now what a Wang putting one foot down once we get it up the stairs we still have to figure out how to get it up the wall people ask all the crashes the box you classify you live with stroke of a plan take those old rules crumple them and because we're gluttons for punishment we're gonna try to install this whole sheet all at once we could cut it into small pieces and put it up pretty easy but why take the easy route I think Frankie smirking at us because while we're upstairs wrestling with this big sheet of rock he's downstairs doing the detail work busting out to build a new firebox a new ventilation system and an inspection port on the chimney alright guys part of what we're doing is looking for visually inspecting behind here for damage any issues kind of going up inside the wall cavity looking for red flags structural issues pests rot you know just trying to find out if there's anything we need to address before we close this up for another decade with the fireplace passing inspection the boys and I can concentrate on getting this first sheet installed the first thing we try is a hacksaw to make the cuts along the roof line [Applause] to install the sheets we simply use the two and a half inch screws with the t20 head that's color-coded as close to the rock as we can get but we're gonna also seal over the top of that to make sure that it blends in perfectly we only pop in enough screws to hold it in place while we attempt to wrap it around the shape of the fireplace to get the sheet to conform means we've got to cut it to wrap it so our lunch is here do you want me to deliver it to you Frankie so Alex just asked a really good question why we were going with the fake stones over the stuff that we had on there well the stuff we had on there looks like real stone but it's not it's actually made out of concrete but it still is a law it's a long tedious process to install so when we endure it when we installed the original stuff what we had to do was we had to wire mesh the whole thing then we had to butter the mesh then we had to butter the stone and we had to start from the bottom work our way up so every time we would bugger stone we have to crawl up the ladder stick the new stone in place then you got to hold it there and you gotta wiggle it till it adheres then when you're done with that you've got to grow all the way around it then you because you got to start from the bottom up because they got because it's so heavy it's got to like hold itself up right now so you rest one on top of the other and like a big jigsaw I get put a min plate but you're spilling on top of the stuff you've already installed it's not possible to not spill on it so then you got to go through and you got a carefully sand off the concrete that you spill onto the stone foot pull them I pull them rocks off on that side too up to that then they'll that little blog that's coming out there's like it's holding the mantle up before the new rock can go up we've got to clear off all the old rock the biggest downfall of this material is it's not fireproof hey whoa whoa ah your milk but it'll melt which means we have to go with a non combustible material just directly over the firebox which is a bit of a challenge on how we're gonna make that blend but we still have small bits and pieces of rock and mesh that still have to be removed before we can even get to that stage do you know that without it solves us stop as the name is Stewie his company's called Universal rocks and what he does is he actually goes out into the desert finds the coolest rock formations he can and then he'll mold it he'll take all of his materials he'll go mold out of the real rock this isn't the first time Frankie's used these and he gets super picky about how they go up to get the best look out of this corner goes up OK in the mill okay you know this stuff's actually made out of bedliner same stuff you put in the bed of your truck so you can you're not gonna scratch it you're not gonna dent it you're not gonna worry about you don't have to have clean cuts on it either which is kind of nice you don't have to worry about getting it perfectly straight lose a little jagged a dog don't can you tell this is the coolest stuff to work with ever [Music] we try to get up as much as we possibly can in the first day but we can't get it all accomplished and unfortunately we lose Alex to a job site the next day but he does stop by hey do you miss working on this stuff somebody shave your head what happened last night oh wait come over here we got to see it come on shave it all off because I messed it up so yeah I wanted to do that I like the short hair anyways though Alex working on a job site that leaves trailer Jake my son-in-law Frankie and I to get the last sheets up and I start focusing on the details so cutting this stuff as a challenge we've used razor blades knives hack saws nothing really works better than the other except make sure it's sharp and make sure you protect your fingers Frankie dick cutting through a ridge is nearly impossible following the streams are a lot easier reviews are the tough ones we still haven't found the perfect cutting tool for this stuff and you'll see he's even gonna try and rinder [Music] the boys are getting the last of the big sheets hung and information I can switch to seaming wherever we bring two sheets together or a sheet to a wall and I want to create a naturalistic look I use 100% silicone and then I throw in my own mixture of dust and dirt that looks similar to the rock that I'm blending it to let's make that screw disappear so now as your I mean honestly guys I could do a better job but there's so much to seam seaming is fun easy monotonous and boring what I mean is it's fun and easy for the first 30 minutes but then after about five or six hours you're filthy you're covered in silicone there's dirt all over the floor because you've been throwing it at the wall and you've got to clean all of that up one easy monotonous and boring but we still had to figure out what we were gonna do at the front of the fireplace so I recruited my boy we needed a non-combustible fireproof material for over the fire box and decided that the existing stones that were there were just too out of place with the other kinds of stones as luck would have it he starts with one of the toughest stones on the fireplace oh my gosh there's a big dog yeah we also pull any loose mesh we run down to the landscaping yard and pick up some new stones that might match the fireplace a little bit closer [Music] but before we can install them we've got to do a little cleanup first since we're going to this real stone I've got to go with the same process I used earlier smash Cement butter brow where we go over the old concrete we pre wet it and make sure that it's in good shape and to hold the rocks in place we're actually putting screws in as brick ledges putting up rock this way is a long slow messy process and you're good about halfway but we've still got to haul everything away that we tore off all right you guys I'm gonna give you an update before the project's actually completely done we were able to get all of the stonework in you can see it there it does match more but this grout is totally the wrong color so what I've got to do is I've got to go in and grout and seam it so that it blends with everything else you can actually see one of my seams right here I'm gonna seam in between all of the grout lines and dress it up and so that's our video for today I'll be honest with you I love love love working with this stuff but it gets to be a lot of work on the same token and so that's all we've got for ya I got burned out Frankie got burned out he went up north they said he was so sore from wrestling these pieces in place that he could barely sleep on his shoulder so if you've got to do a lot of contours you're gonna need some help if you don't have to do a lot of contours flat pieces this stuff is is the bomb diggity and that's it god bless go get em you guys and we'll see you on another one