Fireplace, Part Two: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back.

Well the MDF is was up (see below), the brad holes are caulked, and the whole thing is primed. I hate the mantle though. I think it looks way too big and too boxy. It's made from 1" x 8" boards. Hubby has been bugging me to let him nail it down and force me to commit.

At first I was thinking maybe just taking two inches off the front, but after living with it for almost a week, I'm seriously thinking we should make it look more like what was there before, but a little cleaner and simpler.

I would disassemble the current mantle and use one of the 1" x 8" boards, with trim underneath.

So here's some more fireplace inspiration I've been looking at. Initially I was kind of hoping it would look like this fireplace from The Peartree Cottage. That is a massive brick fireplace though, and the scale is very different than what I'm working with.

This is a DIY fireplace surround by Frugal Home Designs:

More trim detail than I would use though, but closer to my revised vision.

This one is from Domino, via Apartment Therapy. I kind of love it.

While our personal style is vintage modern, the house is more neo-classical generic builder, so the fireplace should really stay with a transitional style rather than something overly modern. I like the trim detail on this one too, so we will probably be copying that.

We picked up the new tile and started installing that. Turned out the old tile was adhered directly to dry wall, so it left huge holes while I was removing it, and in order to patch them we had to take down the MDF on the legs.

The tile is a 2" x 2" travertine mosaic from Home Depot. I'm pretty excited about how it's looking so far. Once the tile is done we can install the trim work and I can paint. It's taking a bit longer than I had hoped, but we should be done before the Spring semester starts.

Dining Room Painted

So we just painted the dining room....

Another shade of grey! Tempered Gray, actually, which is the same shade throughout the entry, laundry room, living room, and hallway. It's one shade lighter on the paint swatch than Urban Sunrise, the color it was before.

Tempered Gray is a truly neutral grey, but Urban Sunrise had a hint of blue in it, and it made the dining room feel cold. I tried to offset it with blue to make the grey look warmer, but I still hated it. I still want to add in some warmer colors like a yellow, but I haven't found anything I like yet.

Winter Break To Do, 2011

So I didn't do too great on my last to-do list, but I blame that on the fact that I started working in a research lab on campus, while taking full-time classes, and dealing with my totally insane but adorable foster dog Slim (who had since been adopted):

Nonstop craziness, all day...

...every day.

200+ photos to finally get a couple in focus. Not exaggerating.

Look at that face. Adorable, but no idea how to get along with other males, and constantly getting into fights with my Davinci and bullying my Goliath. And he peed on EVERYTHING, and then the boys peed on everything again, and it was a vicious cycle of constant urination (thank you, former owner who never got him neutered, that was a lot of fun). Which is why you see him wearing a belly band in the photo above. Because I'm only willing to replace my curtains once.

Anyhow, now for a new list! Hopefully more readily achievable!

• Repaint the dining room Tempered Gray (the same gray that the rest of the house is painted)
• Finish fixing the cat stairs
• Refinish the fireplace
• Sort and organize all the paperwork in the office (again)
• Line the back of the office hutch with fabric

And maybe:

• Replace all the quarter round on the floors
• Start painting the trim and doors white

Fireplace, Part One, or To Create We Must First Destroy.

So, here's what the fireplace used to look like (circa Xmas 2010):

Originally the fireplace was painted the same yellow-beige as the rest of the trim. Hubby painted it with white gloss latex, along with the rest of the trim in the living room.

And now:

Well, we decided we wanted to strip the latex off and repaint all the trim in the house with oil instead, and the trim painting project got put on hold for 18+ months....

So one day a few months ago, I thought to myself, what would make a good day project? Stripping the fireplace.

Only this is what I had after six hours of stripping:

It was a total nightmare. The Citristrip kept drying out and nothing wanted to come off. I even tried using the highly toxic conventional stripper, with the same results. I draped a plastic drop cloth over it to keep the stripper from drying out, and it still wasn't working. Not to mention the stripper wouldn't come off either. HUGE FRIGGIN' MESS.

So the hubby ripped all the trim and MDF off. The plan: widen the frame by 2 inches on each side (to make the legs more proportional to the height), recover in new MDF, prime, paint, and make a new mantle. We will probably also replace the tile, either in something a little lighter or maybe matte black, probably subway tile.

As for the mantle, I'm thinking something like this one from The Lettered Cottage:

Although I really love this fireplace from Sweet Something Designs:

The clean lines are great, and I love how the fireplace acts as its own mantle, but we have no hearth and to make our fireplace that deep (and still functional) would be a huge project. Right now, after having to look at my fireplace in varying states of disaster for the last few months, I really just want to get this fixed quick and cheap.

Master Bedroom, Fall 2011.

Overall, the master bedroom hasn't changed too much. The bed has 'real' art above it, with a frame I stripped and gold leafed. FYI, gold-leaf on a frame with a lot of deep grooves is a PITA. I gave up trying to get total coverage and left some of the wood showing through. We moved the IKEA bookcase into the office, and in its place is the dresser that matches the awesome vanity.