Nearly eight months ago, Stephen and I decided to update our house, again. So we sold most of our furniture and started tearing down walls. We did all of this in May over a span of about two weeks. And then we waited until late September to do anything else. Seriously, there was a wall missing between our bathroom and our bedroom until about three weeks ago.

I foolishly thought the summer months would provide us with the warm weather and long days needed to completely make over our house. Wrong. Summer provided us with very little time to do anything remotely related to updating our house. It did provide us with lots of opportunities to leave town for the weekend and do other fun stuff.

But now that fall has us spending more time at home, we’ve picked up where left off. However, we are notorious for jumping from room to room, project to project before any one thing is ever complete—which means rooms come together slowly and our house looks like a tornado swept through it.

However, all that is about to change! Our living room is nearly complete and I am excited to start sharing bits and pieces of the room. First up is the fireplace.

The before picture:



There are a lot things not working about the fireplace and the wall behind it, but I'll each of you decide for yourselves where we went wrong.

So on to the makeover part.

We decided to create a board and batten effect on the wall behind the fireplace. That particular wall has wood paneling and it’s the only one in the house, which is why we thought painting it a different color might make it seem more intentional. We thought it somehow needed to stand apart from the rest of the walls because it was different, although I don't think brown was the way to go.
But I really think we hit the mark with the board and batten. I stole the idea from The Lettered Cottage, combing their ideas from here and here. The wall is now painted white. I stole the specific shade of white from Young House Love because I also stole their gray (but that’s a different post).




We also realized that it wasn’t just the wall that was working against us; the fireplace also had some troubles. See how narrow the mantel is?





Well, the folks over at The Lettered Cottage built their own faux mantel to enhance their fireplace and I decided we needed to do the same. I also thought we needed to paint the rock but Stephen talked me out of that. It was too risky. Too easy to mess up. He also talked me out of building our own faux mantel and talked me into hiring a good friend of Dylan’s to build us a custom mantel. It was an excellent decision. Steeley does quality work. I've got his number if anyone is interested.



Part of the fee for our custom mantel piece included dinner, which we happily agreed to. We love any excuse to break bread, gnaw red meat, and swallow whole garlic cloves with friends and little brothers.

 

And after all that, here is the finished fireplace.



I love it! It's proportionate and balanced. The stain on the mantel matches the hearth. The white looks sharp. Did I mention that I love it? I don't think the items sitting on the mantel will stay but the big sun thing above it will because I love it, too! It's from Condo Town. Glenn and Stephanie have two of them (well, just one now). It's from the 70s and it's awesome. Hanging it was also an intense process involving a day-long argument. It's not going anywhere.



Whew! That was a long post. But then again, it was a long process.