Fireplace Fun: Part Two

When last we left the Great Fireplace Installation of 2009, most of the wooden trim had been attached, and the fireplace was getting an extra coat of paint...

Little did I know the unexpected challenges I would face!

The first one, was the molding which went around the frame itself. Even though the fireplace frame was built to its largest size, the top molding that came with it for some reason was still many inches too large to fit. Yes, I would have to cut it to size.

I cut it to size all right...

An inch size smaller than I needed it to be! So I had to cut an extra inch off to add in there, and putty over the oops. Sigh... and I thought I'd measured carefully, too!

I also puttied in places where the various molding pieces didn't fit together snugly...

Then I attacked the central place where the fire would be. I'd batted around a number of different ideas for this, but eventually decided on a sort of trick-of-the-eye paint job...

You can see it a bit closer here. Using black and brown paints, I painted a "floor" and a "brick" back for our chimney...

It's amusing to me, given the wall is really just plain plaster and concrete.

Well, that went quite well, I thought-- So I admit, I wasn't quite prepared to face the problem with the five-foot mantel shelf. Here it is. It looks nice, doesn't it?

And yes, it looks very nice there on the floor. But up on the fire surround brackets, where it's supposed to live, that was a whole other story. The five feet, apparently, of this five-feet surround is at its very largest part-- the top! Meaning, the slope to the base of it is nowhere near five feet.

As it was in a box-- a bit larger than five feet was that box, I might add-- I didn't even imagine that the base would be way too small for my fireplace. It looked a bit like that old Chris Farley Saturday Night Live skit, "Fat Man in Tiny Coat."

And with the next mantel size up being six feet, I wouldn't have enough room on either side of the mantel to fit that! What was a girl to do?

Well, a girl was to wander around too many stores looking for an answer. And staring at planks of wood. And checking out standard shelving and finding they came in four feet max. And staring at more planks of wood.

Eventually, I came across the only solution that would work...

Stop staring at the planks of wood, buy one, and cut it to size.
So here we are. With a simple mantel shelf and everything else just about in place. I have a few small finishing touches to do, and then I'll show you all photos of the full room once things are back in their places.

Lessons learned from the project?

• Always measure twice and don't cut wood when you're tired.

• Mantels are sneaky and are not to be trusted.

• Ibprophin can be an ambitious fireplace builder's best friend

• You can accomplish anything if you put your mind to it! (Also if you start at planks of wood long enough.)
  

I wish you all the best on your next project, and thank you so much, folks, for joining me on mine.

• If you missed the fireplace tale, part one, click here.
• And if you missed the goodies found last weekend, here's last week's Treasure Box Wednesday.

This coming Wednesday, I have some interesting goodies to share with you from some Saturday adventures... Because, really, sometimes a girl needs to get away from the fireplace....

Badly.

Fireplace Fun: Part One

I believe I'd mentioned wanting to put a faux fireplace in the blue room I've been working on, on the place where many moons ago, there once really was a chimney breast. I wanted to keep it similar enough to the original fireplace that's in my diningroom downstairs, but make sure it coordinated more toward the blue and cream theme I was using.

Here was what that area of the room looked like without furniture in it...

Because I couldn't fit an architectural salvage wooden fire surround from Construction Junction into my car, I found I could get flat-pack pieces from Lowes and then construct it into place. This meant the baseboard on the chimney wall was going to have to be removed...
That was my project last Sunday, and I was relieved it was easier than I'd thought it would be. I also started using tile glue, to adhere the tiles I'd gotten for inside the wooden surround. I was trying to keep it along the same lines as the fireplace downstairs. That tile is a speckled pale green. I was lucky enough to track down a speckled light blue, also at Lowes...

And at $4 for a square foot, the cost was terrific. I looked into getting repro Victorian tiles, and at $10 for a single six-inch tile, I just couldn't afford it. The Lowes tiles have the same effect and were much more in my budget!

Here you can see the partially tiled wall, and the fire surround accessories I was noodling around with...
Now, time to make Tollhouse cookies...
Or, um, grout the tile. The color of the grout is "vintage white." I liked it because it's not as stark, bright white as some...

Still looks like cookie dough, though. Or maybe I'm just really hungry.

Here's the fully-grouted wall!...

And now on to painting the fire surround and its wooden accessories...

This next part looks like nothing, but it ended up being the rough part. It involved getting the first bracket on the wall, to hook the wooden fire surround to...

Because underneath the wall plaster is the old brick chimney, I had to use a masonry drill bit, in order to drill the holes. This, of course, was not a part of the instructions of my fire surround kit, which assumed I'd be hooking it into drywall. So a consultation from a wonderful, helpful fellow at Home Depot earlier today, and a few of the right tools, set me straight.

And set the bracket straight, as well! I was so excited to have accomplished this, there was actually some dancing involved...
And three more brackets later... would you believe the fire surround actually fit?!

Another musical dance interlude! (Icould tell you I was kidding, but when it comes to home project success sometimes ya just gotta dance)...And before I quit for the day, I got the first two brackets on. These will support the mantle...

The mantle, and all of the fire surround accesories, however, will be for another day. I'm pretty happy with what I've gotten done in just a week, while only really tackling this after work and on the weekend.

So... the project continues! Wish me luck on the rest of it. I'll share with you what happens-- for good or bad!

• If you missed last Wednesday's post on Driving Away the Autumn Blues through some little household tricks, click here.

If not, well, perhaps I'll see your smiling faces this Wednesday. I wish I could promise you all Tollhouse Cookies, but the best I can do right now is grout...

Not so tasty.

Painted Lady

Apologies that my Sunday post is a little late today compared to some days. But I have an excuse I do believe you'll all understand. You see, I've been painting furniture...

And painting furniture...

And painting furniture.

Yes, folks, at my house it's been one of those marathon "Let's Just Get This Done" sessions filled with excited ambition... and which always somehow manages to take four times longer than you initially expect.

The project? Furniture and accessories to be used in my blue sitting room. If you recall the other day, the endtables started out like this and I was about to give them a touch of off-white paint...

And here's the first coat for comparison!...

Ya just don't realize how many sides and fiddly bits there are to a small endtable like this until you have to cover it in three coats of paint, let me tell you! Just when I'd think I'd gotten it all covered, I'd see it from another angle and realize--- oh, NOOOOOO!--- I missed a section.

One of the endtables is pretty much done with the exception of a clear topcoat. The other still has a way to go yet-- and then there's a matching coffetable to tackle.

So while I was... um.. watching paint dry, I started priming this antique fire surround I got at the Construction Junction architectural salvage store...

Some good ol' Rustoleum should keep that rusty section at bay. Then this will get a coat of the off-white paint I'm using on the furniture. I think it will be pretty in the blue room, as part of a makeshift faux fireplace I'm hoping to add in there.

Here you can see it all primed up!


And here's a close-up on the detail. Gotta love those elaborate vines and berries climbing along it...And because I hadn't already gotten myself in enough trouble with painting projects, I ended up painting the black base of a bust I want to use in that room. (Don't worry, the bust was from TJ Maxx, not any priceless antique!) You can see here in the lefthand side of the photo below...

And I also worked over this thrifted lamp...

It's a strange little cherub on it-- I'm guessing it's from the 70s. But I think the antique white paint doesn't look too bad...

This was the first coat. I'll need to do at least one more to even it out. But you can get a sense of how it will be.

Anyway, that's where we stand today. As I get things finished and moved into the room, I'll give you all a little update.

• And if you missed previous posts and want to know which room I'm talking about, you can check out what's been done to date here.

The next Thrift Shop Romantic post will be Wednesday. Oh, and while I remember, I want to thank everyone who has subscribed to the The Thrift Shop Romantic RSS feed. I'm really delighted to have you all share in the thrifting and decorating adventures.