I was super happy when our stone supplier was able to source a single piece of stone for our hearth. No seams! Score. 🙂 However, now we’re at the point of installing the hearth. Moving a who-knows-how-heavy stone! Not so score. 😦

The stone is 10 feet long by 18 inches wide by 2 1/2 inches thick. Every time it has moved up to now has involved a forklift. However, we face two problems:

1. We do not possess or have access to a forklift.
2. A forklift will not fit into our house.

We are relying on people power. Pure brute strength.

I do not have good photos to illustrate the scale of this task because, you see, I really didn’t think ahead to consider the scale of this task.

So here’s the hearth at the far right peeking out from behind the skids of stone back when they were first delivered two and half weeks ago.

And here’s our mason sitting inside the fireplace, just to give you an idea of the size that we’re working with.

The plan was that Matt and I would get home from work a bit early last night and together with our contractor we’d move the hearth into place. Well, I made it home, but Matt got caught in a snowstorm and spent two hours on the road. Our mason and I tested moving the stone on our own. Not gonna happen.

New plan. The three of us would reconvene this morning at 6am before Matt left for work.

Matt and I did a test last night when he finally made it home. His verdict? “Woman, I don’t know if this is gonna happen, even with three of us.”

So we did what you always do in this situation: call Dad.

So the new, new plan is a stone moving party at our house this morning at 6am. There will be Matt’s Dad, the mason, Matt and me. Baxter will be here too, though he probably will not be very much help.

Wanna join us? It’ll be a special way to start your day. 😉

I realize most of you will be reading this after the stone moving party has ended. However, we’d still appreciate if you could send your good wishes. Heck, send levitation charms. Send muscle enhancing drugs. We’ll take all the help we can get!

Update: The stone is in place and is still in one piece. Yay! Full fireplace update to come on Monday.