The big reveal

No, I don't mean my husband's muscles... but here are a few shots of our project to "update the fireplace"
*Edited to add, this picture is not Matt approved. (He'd rather I take it down, since he was posing for moi' and not the blog...but I'm not gonna.)

Laying it out with thin set. We chose a 2x2 Dal tile called Gold dust. Matt did a great job putting the puzzle together and measuring everything. We have some friends who graciously let us use their tile saw so that helped a lot. I helped when I could, but spent a lot of time corralling kids.

Grouting

Drying

Here's a reminder of what the "before" looked like:

Here's the "after" although the grout is still drying and the color is changing. We hoped it would be darker, but are still pleased with the results. The boys are very excited about their new stage, which is what we call it for family home evening. All in all we call it a success, and since we did the work ourselves, it only cost around $100.