Well folks I bought a house and while there are many things that are right about it there are some things that are not so right. Case in point, the chimney. As you can tell from the picture it is a) not very pretty b) somewhat crooked  and perhaps the biggest problem is apparent on a picture that was taken on a rainy day, such as this one was. No gutters and improper flashing runs water down the sidewall of the chimney. Now I don't know if it's through time or if it was improperly done (probably both) but the cement surface of the chimney is porous. To make a story short the plywood and some of the framing underneath was rotten.

From the inside it wasn't much better. As you can see in this picture the fake marble cheap tile look didn't work very much. I've already started exploratory surgery in the picture but you get the idea. Last but not least some of the distances required by law weren't respected in the old instalation so I was going to have to do something about it anyway else the insurance company wouldn't insure me.

In this one you can see the re-framing of the upper bits of the chimney. I extended the snow breaker (the pointy bit going up the roof) quite a bit. The original one being quite anemic and didn't provide a good drainage path.

Moving forward a bit in time you can see in this picture the cedar shingles I used to replace the cement facing in the original. What's not apparent is that most of the framing, the plywood sheating, weather membrane have all been replaced. Also the white strip at the bottom is solid PVC. It will never rot no matter what.

Because I'm me and doing it the easy way seem never to be in my stars I decided to cut and bend my own aluminium shingles for the chimney roof. It's a style of roof covering (and sometimes walls on mansard buildings) I noticed first in southern France and again in Spain. They usualy do it with copper but I'm not a rich man so aluminium will do nicely. I don't have a shear or bending break so every shingle is cut with hand shears and bent around little jigs I made out of melamine bits that where at one point a bathroom cabinet!

Here's what it looks like all done from the outside, minus the ladder of course.

 As for the inside, I tore the whole thing down to the bare frame and started from there. Over top the framing, in order, there is: a layer of drywall, metal studs, a layer of heatshielding cement board. And there will be a stone veneer once I find one I like. What appears at first as an excess of materials is actually to provide an airgap between the cement board and the actual wall. It's mandated by law so nothing much I can do about it. As it stands today I can use the stove, everything is safe. You can tell by the bits of molding lying about that I'm working on the mantel and once that's done the only thing left will be the stone veneer.