Well it didn’t quite fit. The inside of the existing fireplace was slightly smaller at the front than the rear. The new one would slide into the old opening but not far enough for the flues to connect.

My neighbor had come over to watch me struggle with the fireplace and suggested that I cut the bricks of the original fireplace to match the newer one. “Yeh, right, cut the bricks.” I say. He smirked at me while finishing his beer and told me to hold on a minute. About 5 minutes later he walks in the front door with this huge gas powered cement saw. The noise was crazy inside the small room but nothing compared to the dust and chips thrown up as he cut through the old bricks like a saw through rotted wood. It took him all of about five minutes cutting it to size.

Well after about twenty minutes of clearing out debris we slide the fireplace right in. Only problem was that the new fireplace was about a foot longer than the original. This made it stick out of the wall well past the studs. After talking about it for a bit he offered to frame it in and sheetrock it for me. I didn’t know that he did sheetrock so I asked him to come up with a price to frame in the fireplace, make a pass through hole between the kitchen and the living/dining area, and sheetrock the entire house.

Well he came up with a price that included my supplying the materials. It seemed O.K. so I had him write up a shopping list and I ordered it from Home Depot the same day. They were not able to deliver for three days so I spent my time cleaning up the mess from the saw.

The materials were delivered on time and I spent the afternoon moving them into the house and organizing them so that everything was accessible. When he came in I showed him where everything was and gave him the down payment of 20% in cash. He suggested that he start on Saturday morning and that it should take him about six weeks.

That Saturday I stopped by the house and he and his helper was working away framing the fireplace. The next weekend they had roughed in the sheet rock in the fireplace and had the pass through cut out and framed in.

I skipped a few weeks checking their progress while I was out of town on business. When I did get a chance to stop by I was surprised that nothing had been completed since the second week. Since he was not home that day I assumed that he had other work he was working on or that he was on vacation.

A couple days later he was drinking a beer on his front porch when I pulled up. He said that he was a bit behind because of commitments made beforehand that were not going as planned. He also relayed that he was in need of cash for his rent and asked for an advance. Since I had agreed to make progress payments I had no problem giving him $300 to tide him over.