Home Renovations: Fireplace

I spend a lot of time by the fireplace in the winter.  Our fireplace was very foolishly put at the far end of the house where it barely heats anything, but we are dependent on it and so, my only option is to huddle as closely to it as possible until it's time to go to my freezing cold bedroom each night.  A fireplace should be the heart of the home; it should be an inviting space where people gather not just for warmth but for comfort.  This space in my home has brought no such comfort and I thought it was high time to remedy that.  So this post will be devoted to a little mini-makeover I just completed.

This photo is how the living room/fireplace looked when we moved in.  Note the hideous mirror, and heavy blankets hung on the windows (on top of blinds that were on top of roll up shades.  Seriously have wondered if this guy was a vampire!) so that the house could be even darker and more cave-like.  The first thing we did before our furniture arrived was to paint the walls.  I chose a blue-gray for this room and we added white trim.  In addition to that, Mr. Bleu put a mantle over the fireplace.  I put my oil lamps there so I would have them if I needed them during one of our inevitable winter power outages, and after adding a fireplace set, we called it good.  We weren't staying here for long, right?  So, why bother fixing it up any more than this.  And so, the fireplace has remained a year round eyesore of junk to be burned and the ashes of junk departed for six years.

Because this tiny little stove does not hold a fire overnight, we do burn a lot of cardboard and paper in the winter having to restart the fire each morning.  As a result, everyone stacks all their paper and cardboard in this corner year round until it nearly takes over.  Aside from the cardboard and ashes, this area is very bare.  I haven't put a rug there, because eventually it will get burned or have mud tracked on it when we carry in firewood.  And there is a leak in the ceiling that prevents me from putting up curtains over the adjacent window.  Also of note, see that black cord running along the wall?  Before we moved in a tree fell on the house which caused the roof to leak and the electricity to go out for that entire side of the house.  So, we have to run a cord for the lights to plug in all the way across the wall.  Yikes, is it ever a mess back here.   This is the way the fireplace has looked for the past six years or so since we moved in and I didn't clean up at all, because I wanted to showcase just exactly how it truly looks in the before photos.  As you can tell, I had a lot of work to do. And if you scroll down, you can see how it now looks.

So, the first thing I wanted to do was to paint the under side of the mantel, since that never got done.  Then I painted the bricks because some genius decided to use black caulk around them.  After that, I put up a vintage fireplace screen that I bought for a song because it "needed a little TLC." A fireplace screen has been traditionally used to cover the fireplace in warmer months and make a room look more elegant.  For a similar purpose, I am using it to block this eyesore in the non-winter months.  The red trim on the screen didn't exactly match my decor, but then I remembered that Mr. Bleu had bought some red lanterns in the winter and decided to put them up top for a little color cohesion.  I think it worked out pretty well.  

I replaced the horrible mirror with a Hobby Lobby piece that I dry brushed with chalk paint to make it whiter, and finally I decorated the mantle with existing pieces like this country maiden statue that was a gift years ago and some new vintage finds as well.  I painted the statue white to match the theme, and added a few antique bottles that were either gifts or found on my grandmother's property.  The doll heads were a bit of an obsession; I have no idea why I wanted to use them for decoration, but I did.  Turns out these things are crazy expensive, even if they're broken and just a 1978 reproduction instead of the real deal.  

I am calling this space done for the moment as soon as I move this mirror up about 6 inches, but eventually this fireplace will be relocated to another area of the house and we will knock out this wall and add on a couple of bedrooms, hopefully before our children move out, but if not, we'll have a gym and a craft room instead.  Also, the last thing to do on our list for this room is to tear up this horrible carpet, put down laminate wood flooring, and find a rug that I don't mind getting mud from boots or burns from logs that roll out.  I'm definitely happier with this little mini-makeover and looking forward to enjoying the winter by this much cozier fireside.