To be honest, I never really did like the fireplace in my parent's house. I always thought it was a bit big and the color of the mantel wasn't my style. However, when it's cold outside or there's a chill in the house, it's nice to be able to turn it on with a flip of the switch.
When we decided to purchase this house, I knew immediately that painting this thing was going to be high on the priority list.
I was initially planning to go white (again), but decided to mix it up a bit while still keeping the color neutral to go with the other furnishings in the house. As you can see from the pictures, the kitchen still needs to be painted along with the green kitchen 'unit' as we like to call it... that will be a pale blue/green.
So, last week I spent a few days transforming it. I sanded it lightly, wiped it down with a wet rag and proceeded to paint it gray. The paint had a satin finish but turned glossy after I put on a few coats of clear coat. I'm not to fond of the shine and thought about painting it again with a coat of gray, but I was so excited to finish and pull that painter's tape off!
The gray matches the marbling in the black part perfectly and it gives it a much more modern feel, in my opinion.
As for the mantel, it's quite large and I wasn't sure what to do with it at first. But when Scott and I made that trip to Minneapolis a few weeks back, we found these really cool marquee letters that were so fitting for our home. The mantel is still in limbo as I still have lots of things packed in boxes waiting to find a home, but for now this is what it looks like.
Tomorrow we're getting new light gray carpet installed which will hopefully brighten things up even more. Scott is currently in Montana on a snowboarding trip, but when he returns he will finish putting up the baseboards, something we were waiting to do until after the carpet was in.
Today I made some new colorful pillows for our sofa and I'm looking forward to getting some shelves up and some pictures on the walls. I'm finding it hard to commit to anything considering there are no longer holes in the walls. Anyone else ever feel like that after you've just freshly painted?
Still so much to do...
Barb!! We have the same fire place!! And I did the same thing :) Dustin put up a wall above it, to get rid of the space. I, then, found a really cool huge weathered timber that is bolted for our mantel. The people who owned the house before us had put in an ugly tile hearth. We ripped that out and poured concret down. Looks really, really cool. I'll send pics
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