Hello all! Wow, what a full weekend! My husband was out of town so the kiddo and I played hard all day Saturday – all kinds of fall goodness. Sunday I worked my tail off getting the fireplace finished up, finally! It’s DONE!
I had a couple things left to do to get it done – I had already finished up the wall treatment above the fireplace and I’m really pleased with how it came together. I knew all along I wanted to plank the top wall, but I wanted to do it a little differently than I did last time. I wanted the planks to be much wider than the standard mdf or pine I usually use. So I went straight for the underlayment at the hardware store:
This is the stuff used under flooring and it’s SUPER cheap. I paid $13 for a big sheet. The nice guy at Lowe’s cut it down into strips for me – each one just over five inches wide.
The edges needed to be sanded down just a little bit – it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be though. Then I gave them two coats of my Peppercorn color and started the process of hanging:
My wall is a little over 50 inches tall so I did some figuring to determine the width of each plank – I knew I was going to put some space between each one so I ended up with the five+ size. You can use anything you want as a spacer – I had my brad nails on hand so used those.
By the way, I painted the wall the gray color first – this is important if you’re going to leave any space between your boards.
I moved my “spacers” down each plank as I nailed them in, checking for level while I did it:
This install went really fast – the front part anyway. The only parts that took some time were around the outlet:
I used my jigsaw to cut out the spot for it. This wood is so thin I could have just scored it and broken it off really:
I painted right over the outlet and the cover:
The sides took some time as well just because I needed so many pieces. These were installed the same way:
Because I needed so many boards that were the exact same size I just used my original as a guide to cut them all out:
I just lay it on top of the board, mark the line, cut, lay it down again, cut…it saves time instead of measuring every single piece.
You can see here how skinny this wood is – exactly what I was looking for!:
The corners didn’t need to be perfect because I covered those with some corner molding.
I had finished all that up last week but still needed to touch up some spots. I also put one final coat on the entire fireplace – it needed three coats of the Peppercorn all together.
Here’s that same corner with the trim covering up those rough edges:
I haven’t even filled the holes on the wall yet and I don’t think I will – they add a little rustic flair that keeps this area from getting too stuffy. That’s my excuse anyway. :)
When I designed this huge fireplace I knew the TV was going to have to go above. Not my first choice but it was the only way to make the layout work. So I had the guys make an inset in the middle of that upper wall for the TV to sit into:
We have it on a bracket that moves any direction – but when we push it back in you can’t see any cords at all. I LOVE that. Love love love:
I cannot believe this thing is finally done! I’m absolutely head over heels for all of it!:
I went out of my comfort zone painting it that dark gray but I LOVE it. It feels good to branch out every once and a while. :)
We get such good light in here now the room can take it:
I haven’t really decorated it yet – this is stuff I’ve had up here and I’m not sure it will stay. I’m not sure if I’ll keep the long box up there or not:
The mantel is so deep -- my possibilities are endless! I just want to play around with some things to see what works. For now it’s simple and I like it.
I had some gold candle sconces from Target to hang on either side of the TV but when we held them up last night both my husband and I thought they didn’t look right. It looked too busy. I think I’d still like to try something on either side perhaps, but they will need to be long and skinny:
The crown still needs to be painted and finished up there…I’ll tackle that all at once around the room.
If you remember we had to build the fireplace out this far because otherwise we would’ve had to get a permit to build a “doghouse” off the back of the house for it. That would have added quite a bit of time and lots of money so we went with this. It ended up working GREAT because we now have extra storage and a spot for the TV components on the sides:
A few of you asked and YES the remotes work through that metal sheeting! I LOVE that I have all kinds of junk in those cabinets right now and you can’t even tell. Buwhahaha. :)
We were going to hold off on any more construction till next year…but then I quickly realized I just wanted to get it all over with. So that window on the right will be double doors soon (I’m hoping within a month) and the bay window in the kitchen will get a makeover too. So I haven’t continued the molding in that area or painted anything – there’s no point till after we get that done.
But the big beast in the room is DONE!! It took me nearly a month!:
I’m SO pleased with it. Now onto the smaller jobs in this room to get it finished up – paint, molding fixes, door trim, more paint and then some final decorating touches. This is taking waaaay longer than I thought it would but it’s been a pleasure along the way. :) Thanks for coming along with me, as always.
To see more about the dark gray color, go here.
To see how I cut the inserts out of the doors and what I used to cover them, go here.
For a tutorial on installing a tile fireplace surround, go here.
For tips on how to clean the glass on a gas fireplace visit here and more tips on sprucing up your fireplace here.
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