The Fireplace Project - Version 2

This weekend we had some work colleagues over for a Cinco de Mayo party (why do we celebrate Cinco de Mayo? Long story), including our house-flipper friend. After I showed off our new basement -- he was super-impressed by my tile selection in the bathroom thankyou -- I gave him the rundown of the fireplace project.

He had a great suggestion ... why pull all that wood work down? It's pretty nice and there's a chance ripping it down might uncover a nasty surprise. Do I want to fix drywall? Um no. He recommended I just cover up the tile within the mantel frame, pulling off the thin inside trim piece to give the stone a really clean finish.

I'll admit, at first I wasn't going for it. I want a chunky wood mantelpiece on top of all that stone (whine). But the more I thought about it, the more I recognized the wisdom. Less risk, less cost and a pretty great end result. Here's my "artistic" rendering of the final product ...


He has also used the faux stone I am planning to use and assured me it was easy to install. And liked the idea of painting the brass insert with some high-heat black paint to tone down that dated gold.

So, yeah, good talk. I'm sooo ready to get this project started.



Related Posts:
So, yeah, my new basement bathroom is glorious
Fireplace before photos
All the Fireplace Project posts

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Behold! Everard Blue!

Image
Here's the After picture of our master bedroom now that the walls are a dark and moody blue. Maybe the best part is I was at work while the painters were here, so I walked in and found -- as if by magic -- the room no longer minty green but a bold blue. That's pretty awesome. They also painted the trim an eye-popping white, which I just love against this blue. And the angle is a dark beige-y, tan color that I hope goes with the headboard. I spent the evening cleaning and re-hanging the drapes, and moving the furniture back into position. It will be a while before I dare hang anything in here. I'm too in love with the walls to put too many holes in them right now. So, just in case I'm looking for this information later: The walls are "Everard Blue" by Benjamin Moore . And the tray is "Curly Willow" by Behr . Now, does that furniture look too dark against the walls or is it just me? And wouldn't a lighter wood or white look fabulous agains...
Keep reading »

Family Calendar Improvement

Image
 Made a quick improvement at the start of the school year that I'm pretty excited about.  And yes, I'm probably the only one excited about it, but here goes ...  Here's our "command central" in our kitchen. This is a good landing spot, and a central place to all look at the family calendar ... it's that huge wipe board in the middle of the photo. All our activities are supposed to be written on here and our electronic family calendar on Google.  (Brief aside: my family is the WORST at writing their plans down in either calendar and Dave still doesn't share his events on our Google Shared Family Calendar consistently, which makes me nuts. And they all ask me "what are we doing today?" instead of looking at the calendar, usually directly behind me. But, that's another post.) I went to so much trouble putting this little area together and that huge calendar with wobbly writing was really killing the sophisticated look of that space. PLUS, we don...
Keep reading »

Basement Shiplap Project

Image
The guys left me all the unused shiplap from the bathroom and I've been trying to think about where to use it. I had so many ideas but not a lot of shiplap, so I eventually settled on this corner of our basement. It's where the exercise mats and treadmill live, right behind the sofa. And also where the Marvel-themed bathroom with shiplap is located. So it made sense. It took much of a rainy Sunday to cut and nail up the new boards ...    I even had enough to do on the "backsplash" of our little kitchenette in the basement I've been slowly building out.  Next up will be to patch all the nail holes and calk around the edges for a clean look. And then the best part ... picking out paint color. Since this is a "free" project, I'm hoping I can find a color in my paint cabinet.  I'll keep you posted. 
Keep reading »