How To Transform an old Fireplace On a Budget

all right guys welcome back to another episode on the abandoned house remodel on the last week's video if you don't know if you've seen it yet we remodeled the entire kitchen this thing was a mess it was Tiny so we blew it up bigger and at the same time built all new cabinets new countertops new backsplash new appliances new everything and it looks [Music] incredible today we make our way to the living room here if you haven't seen the video when we did the electrical we demoed all of the well basically this bench extended there's a little corner cabinet so there's not much here anyways so we had to rip all the dryw to run new electrical so that's why it looks like all right oh the mission for today is going to be to transform this into something incredible I'm thinking cabinets on the sides I'm thinking shelving on the sides and I'm thinking some beefy looking fireplace that will really create a big statement here but before we can started with that we need to start this demo work so we can get a blank canvas let's get [Music] started I don't know how this worked out but this this is a vine that grew through the house from where I can't tell oh it's from these little Corners right there isn't that wild how smart Vines can be they just can find their way through any small little place and next thing you know it's in your house there's so many things in this house exhibit a that blows my mind that the house never burned down so this guy wanted to take an extension cord to that outlet so he just spliced two of these and this is I think 122 cable maybe even 10 to and uh he just spliced them together and put some electrical tape over it and call it a day just Friday I was really hoping when we bought this house and we did a walk through we pulled this carpet up I was really hoping it's going to be one of those HDTV situations where it's like oh my gosh these are real hardwood floors in our scenario it's these stupid floor tiles and uh looks like 60 years is how long the adhesive would last on these ones cuz they're popping off a little too easy might put a mask on I think you're a smart guy for this [Music] Kyle guys I'm going to tell you the secret sauce to me being able to run at such a high level high capacity tack on this project cuz I know you guys are always like this guy must be on something cuz he is talking way too fast he's doing way too much and it's true and the only way I can do that is by taking care of my body I work out every single day I do cold plunges every single day for both physical and mental health but also I started meditating and recently I started using therapy and that's where I'm very excited to share the sponsors of today's video that we've partnered with many of times before better help starting therapy can be very hard to be honest with you I remember reaching out to my friend to see who she uses for her therapist and she's like I'd love to recommend you but they're not taking you new patience and that could be very 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therapy you can switch to a new therapist at no additional cost without stressing about insurance or who's in your network or anything like that look many people just like myself spend countless amount of hours every week at the gym to try to take care of their body with the hopes that can help their mind so why not give your mind the same level of attention over 4 million people have started using better help to live a happier healthier life and the great thing about it is you can too so if you think that you might benefit from betterhelp head to betterhelp.com slmr buildit or simply just click the link description below clicking that link not only helps support this channel but you will also receive 10% off your first month of better help so you can start connecting with a therapist and see if you might benefit from it thank you better hope for help support this channel supporting me and my brain now let's get back to remot on this fireplace the stone the nice thing is this is just a face veneer meaning it's just just the face of the actual brick of stone so it's just a Decorative Stone uh we're going to need to pop that off because we're going to bring a different one and there's almost impossible way of matching the 60-year-old stuff hopefully breaks off pretty easy uh the fire uh brick is inside so it won't fingers crossed and won't get damag but uh we try to go smooth and slow and not make more problems for ourselves all right this might be a lot easier than I thought hold on is that look at all this wiggler [Music] room w that one came off a little too [Music] easy that's cool it's just laying on [Music] [Applause] [Music] top this is a gas fireplace not the ones that you can just put wood but it's also doesn't have a glass cover to it as traditional modern day ones have interesting part is he's got mortar on the base of this thing here so well I was going to say I could possibly put some rocks in there but I have to create a little Ledger this is kind of becoming bigger problem than I thought it would be I thought this is going to be pretty straightforward pop this brick off but it's kind of a hodge podge this guy this used to be a window here so this guy closed off the window and had this fireplace built I don't like how many transitions there are like there's this mini Hearth coming out here like a little ledge a lot of variables not to mention this Gap here so I'll have to just sleep on it and figure out how I can make everything at least one single plane but before I get started with that I need to start taping up all these joints uh so that we can start working with the you know the rest of the project and not get the mud all over the [Music] place [Music] so since I just got done with the kitchen and all the mudding there the thing that took away from it is to get a cleaner uh and faster actually I think application of of mud thin it out so it actually Glides a lot easier as opposed to being chunkier and dry so you're having to scrape it on there um and also when taping use that corner of the trout or the the drywall knife here so you know you just get it loaded up right in the corner like this and then go to an angle so it spreads so much quicker especially when it's diluted to the right consistency looking good looking really good all right so here's the thing I'm going to have cabinets here and because I just built 19 or 20 cabinets in the kitchen I need a break from it I don't want to do that so I went down to Home Depot and I bought some cabinets uh that'll go in the sides here saves me a lot of time so these are Home Depot Birch raw cabinets so there's Red Oak that have the Grain in there which nobody wants anymore and then there's Birch which is nice cuz we can give it a beautiful stain or we can paint them it's up to us now there's a downfall and I'm going to tell you what the downfall is it has something to do with the fact that I can actually carry this by myself so they are what is it 36 in tall 36 in wide 34 in tall Classic Dimensions Home Depot for these are 150 bucks a piece I think maybe even 140 and the front of them look great and to be honest with you if I was to build them I'd probably build them for $100 more than what I bought them for together when I was strapping them down and this is why they're so inexpensive my strap broke the back of it and what is the back made out of good old little porous particle board so I'm going to have to figure out how to fix that fortunately it's not on the front on the face frames but that just goes to show what you're saving money on uh personally I think if it's something like this where it's just like a TV area they're probably have board games inside you know DVD players PlayStation consoles it's do you guys think Home Dep will let me return this I mean the box has lifetime warranty but it was my fault using the ratchet straps but then again they didn't have anything covered here so how could you know not to compress it it doesn't doesn't say like delicate don't press hard I don't know let me know in the comments section what do you guys think will they do it uh I am going to borrow it for a second to make my measurement here for this fireplace since I have it anyways okay so the idea is I'm going to have bookshelves going all the way to the top we're just shelving you know trinkets all that Decor on both sides we're going to build a hearth that's the part that's in front of the fireplace oh it's almost a shy of 8 ft the idea will be Stone going all the way to top bookshelves there and then this Hearth coming out with uh I don't know maybe tile I don't know exactly what to do when it's open like this but uh maybe T's the way to go so in the meantime I need to go get some 2x4s and start kind of building my framing for this hear uh so we can get ready for stone bless the good Folks At Home Depot I was fully transparent with them told her what had happened she goes no problem it's got a lifetime warranty on it should have been the manufacturer's fault for not putting plastic you know styrofoam on there or anything like that so got a brand new cabinet don't have to fix anything throw the thing on start building on hear it's a good day [Music] y one trick that I've used for years is you just start your nail oh need a different drill uh going straight for like I don't know an eighth a quarter and then bend it down and then you can go straight to make your life so much faster if you want another cheat coat get another drill and just essentially pre-drill your little pilot hole therefore you can just literally just slide your screw through and it will be a perf perfect day because you won't be cursing left and [Music] right nice strong Hearth here nice and big to so you can actually sit on it I like the way it turned out we're going to wrap it with all the goodies before the stone can come in but before we get started on that we need to establish our kind of side to sides and to make it easier I'm going to start just building my shelves right here right now so I'll need two of them they'll be 53 in tall so let's just start working on our shelves and figure the rest out [Music] one of the first projects I probably have ever built well actually was inspired to build was uh 2016 my wife bought me my first Craig jig pocket hole jig and an impact drill and uh one of the first things I looked how to do was like creating a shelving unit and it's cool because once you have your pocket holes in place you simply just put some wood glue and then stack the son of a gun up so it makes it easy so if you want to get in the building get a pocket hole jig and make some shelves and you'll be on your way to building so this is birch by the way uh the reason I got Birch is cuz my cabinet's a birgin so when I stain it all it's all going to look uniform sometimes you can get away with Maple but Maple has a tendency of still creating a little contrast so don't do [Applause] [Music] welcome to another segment is Alex going to break his back only one way to find out oh shoot that's not good oh boy stay don't follow on me now this is roughly the spacing of that countertops that we'll have in here it's they're inch and a qu this is 3/4 in so more than enough of a gap hey that's not that bad huh so this is 3/4 we got another half in to go ooh countertops get installed I don't think they're going to fit with this size dimension I think I might have to trim this down just a sco every time there's always something that comes up even when I measure 13 oh that's why look at this another 1/ in maybe actually 5/8 there and then this side is looks like a quarter so it's hard to tell if it's the floor if it's the ceiling I think it's the floor cuz the ceiling's the drywall would be cracking if it was the ceiling so it's probably the floor is all sloping all wonky welcome to 60-year-old house this looks so beautiful I mean it looks like a classic Christmas movie kind of fireplace that with the red brick and this big columns here and this big Hearth so for wrapping this hear we don't have to Overkill it so I'm going to have uh granite countertops for the tops and the bottom here and so when Granite sits on here this is not a big span we don't need to start putting OSB I mean we could but it's just going to be Overkill now on the front uh that's a different story we're going to be using cement board and the reason we're using cement board is because we're going to have a stronger adhesion in fact I looked so many different articles online of how to properly install stone veneer indoors I've done it plenty of times outside and there's like a 80% of them are saying you can put Stone venea directly on drywall well the only problem is if there's a little bit of vibration that stuff breaks off and gets brittle in fact you remember how easy started coming off here so I think what I'll do just so I don't regret it later spend the extra 60 bucks and I bought cement board to put it on top here so therefore I'm also going to put it in the front as well that being said cement B [Music] time oh I haven't got cement board in a long time I was treating it like drywall hopefully it would break off I still think it could do that I just karate chopped it with my elbow all right well going to got a a bunch of small pieces to put on all right that was about maybe s scorches over hopefully that's enough to do the trick I don't like [Music] this ah now let's be safe I'm going to use my angle grinder look what I found I forgot that I have this in my Arsenal so this is a little chop off cutting wheel uh it's nice cute little 3 iner and this one has for the blade set for tile and fiber cement and guess what we got we got fiber cement now in my defense this is a pre-existing fracture when I tried breaking a last time so I felt this one and uh that's just my mistake [Music] all right I feel like I keep running into one speed bump after another so like I mentioned earlier the stone issue here so the way he had it done is the the fireplace brick is laid in place it's a gas fireplace keep that in mind not that much and he had like a veneer going over where these bricks stopped so they actually recessed in here and then a little bit more on the outside it was it's done so poorly so I thought no problem I could find this brick went down to Lowe's they don't have it went down to Home Depot they don't have it then I went to my local masonry place that I buy all my Stone from I'm like no problem they're going to have it wrong they don't have it they have a similar size but they don't have the etching and not to mention it's a different kind of red so regardless he going to stand out I'm thinking about what to do here and um I just I don't know this is one of those things where you're going to see it from here it has to be fire safe and I'm just kind of stuck between a rock and a heart place after much brainstorming I think we put the nogin to work and we figured out a solution so I got my S Type I got my n type mortar built up here and then I will be able to add my drywall here continue my cement board and then the stone that I got has Corners so it will fill in any of this exposed section there um every problem has a solution there's an argument whether or not this is the perfect solution but like they say in evolution it's not a perfect solution it's a workable solution so uh that's where we're at right now cabinets check shelves check strong hear check cement board check here's the thing I really want to put a mantle up here just cuz I feel like like it creates the perfect kind of touch to it all uh plus separation between the TV and all that stuff but being you know 8ft tall ceilings maybe even yeah 7 and 1/2t Tall ceilings there's not enough room for it because because this is a large space anybody who has is probably going to want a bigger TV and if you think of like maximum 65 in TV you're looking at this much space it would look really awkward yes you could put a smaller TV but the problem with that is like you have this big grandio space you don't want to rob somebody of the opportunity put a bigger TV that's just dumb so I'll leave it without it so now that we've made that decision let's start working on our Stone headed up to my local masonry place I buy all my stuff from there uh so this stuff it's a stone veneer and the color is actually really cool I've never used this color it's called Wildflower by Peak ledge and it's a whole bunch of whites and Grays with the hints of tans in there it just creates almost like a like a snow cap Mountain kind of look so we'll start throwing that on there work on our Corners first and then try to fill in the rest like we've always done let's see if we can make a Flawless job this time one of the first things I'm doing cuz I know I'm going to run into this problem because I made enough mistakes in my time is I want to make sure that all the stones have the right amount of spacing to reach the same elevation so I got a/ inch off the top/ inch off the top here all these stones are different see this one's really thin this one's a little bit thicker this is even thicker so lining them all up making sure that I reach my same destination so that when I come to the top here it's just going to be smooth sailing and we know we love a good set [Music] sail got our S Type mortar here let's ho it [Music] up so the last couple of times I've done uh stone veneer like this this is by the way X exterior stuff there's interior stuff it's a lot thinner and when it's interior stuff you treat it like backsplash you just put your thin set on or tiid hesive and you can work your way up with this kind of stone it's a little bit different story cuz you have to put tar paper than uh the metal galvanized la which is like chicken wire uh and then you do a scratch coat and then you apply your your S Type mortar but this is interior and this is going on already uh cement board so I'm kind of treating this as my scratch coat so that's where the adhesion is going to happen I'm applying it the same way I apply to exteriorly you got to put like about an inch thick scrape the edges press it in get all the water out except for I'm back buttering this section just to make sure none of that moisture gets escaped so I get kind of double coverage I don't know if I'm wrong 100% I'm probably 90% sure this is the way to do it um but I know I got professional masonry guys that follow me so I'd love to hear comment down below let me know is this the appropriate way to apply it using exterior veneer uh and uh and if it's not be nice [Music] gosh that makes me happy this is beautiful now I am having troubles with this because when I did my fireplace outside if you haven't seen my video from last summer the stone that I picked was actually really convenient because it had all these little patterns but they all came in the same exact 5- in Grid so you can just start slapping them you can't slap these…