Paint It Back

"I see that white frame and I want to paint it back...."
-Misquote of the Rolling Stones, with apologies-- only they haven't seen my living room window

My house was built at the turn of the 1900s. And while a number of things remain just as they were over 100 years ago, other things have evolved over time to suit changing tastes.

At one point, this meant someone had switched the orientation of the staircase, in order to add a coat closet underneath.

In another case, it meant someone had closed off a doorway to the kitchen from the entry hall, making a new entrance elsewhere.

And, perhaps even later, it meant blocking up the side window in my living room (which directly faces the neighbor's unsightly wall), and painting the Window Frame to Nowhere white.

The thing is, the white doesn't mean you come into the living room and think, "Window?-- What window?"

Or rather, it doesn't mean I do. Oh, I see it. I know it's there busy being not a real window and serving no actual function. Just lurking oddly on the wall.

It throws the balance of the room off. If I believed in feng and shui, I would say it was violating the two of them in some kind of purposeful anti-Zen conspiracy.

Or maybe that's just the fumes from today's project talking. It's hard to tell.

See, I've decided that the troublemaker window really needs to be painted the same type of faux woodgrain that the rest of the woodwork in that room had been done.
So, we will see how it goes in the next week. I've taped off. I've added a coat or two of a "aged oak". It's by no means finished, but I'm optimistic...
Or it could just be those fumes again.

The plan is to hang this William Morris type stained glass window panel in the center of it, once it's done, and place a few of my leafy McCoy pottery pieces on the ledge.
So, while I'm afraid today's post is probably a little anti-climactic-- as I don't have a finished project to share at the moment-- consider it a preview of things to come. Things that could look so beautiful, it will bring a shining tear to our eyes...

Or it could go so dadblasted horribly wrong, it'll make us all laugh ourselves off our chairs.

So, either way... win-win, really.

But wish me luck, would you? :)

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.