Cozy Cabin Fireplace Update

I haven't worked on the Cozy Cabin project in ages.  To be honest I was a little discouraged after I started the fireplace a while back.  I used some inexpensive air dry clay.  I made the rocks, glued them in place and let it dry.  Sadly, the clay shrunk by almost 50% and most of them fell off the walls.  Needles to say it has been sitting in this state for quite a while,

  Until today!

This is what it looked like at the end of today.  

Let me back up-

I started off by removing all of the cabin furniture which needed to be dusted any way.

I scraped off the old air-dry clay rocks.

This was the debris field outside the cabin.  I decided that since the clay was done shrinking, I could probably re-use some of it. 

After a little research, this was the design I came up with.  I made a template out of cardboard and a removable firebox too.

 I decided to work horizontal this time.  The two logs will support the mantle.

This is the firebox portion of the fireplace.  I started by re-using some of the old pieces and gluing them in.

This was my progress early on.  I had envisioned that I would roll our the clay and glue it on, but I was having trouble getting the river rocks to look round, so I ended up rolling the clay into different sized "rocks" in my hands and glueing them on one at a time.  I mixed in some of the rocks from the previous fireplace. After the everything drys, I will paint.

To see my earlier posts on the cabin click HERE or on the cabin label below.