J Cooper Photography

When we moved in…the living room was a big beige box.  I was so grateful for the extra space.  But I just could not get excited about that room.  Big oak french doors leading into a sea of pale beige carpet, yellowish beige walls, and the biggest, UGLIEST, fireplace.  We learned at the inspection that this fireplace was ELECTRIC.  Meaning…that bad boy is simply plugged into the wall.  At first I was glad…that meant I could get rid of it.  But then I felt guilty.  I mean, someone spent a lot of money on that big, ugly thing.  So we opted to give it a face lift and see if we could dress her up a bit!

{inserting a pre-apology that many of the images are iphone captures from before we had our home PC up and running!}

Here she is in all her original “glory”.  It’s hard to tell her scale from some of the pictures…but she is a beast of a thing.  Our living rooms is 24″ long and she is huge!

Sanded down and ready for a good coat of primer.

Feeling a bit happier with a nice coat of white primer to cover up the expanse of oak.

After several coats of “creamy white” Sherwin Williams Pro Classic paint in semi-gloss she was nearly a new woman.  But the tacky metal surround was still really bothering me.  I just couldn’t come to terms with the drab green sponge painted look.  And the flat hearth looked cheap laying on the floor (it was actually just a piece of metal that the fireplace sat atop).  So Mr. P and my Dad built a raised hearth and my mom and I headed out to find some tile that I loved.  I settled on a glass mosaic tile.   I loved the variations of white and thought it added a fun modern touch to the room!

The hearth building in process

Here she is all blinged out and ready for the ball.   One of the most amazing moments of her transformation came when my Dad realized that her ugly brass trim was simple MAGNETIC strips which we could snap off in a jiffy!

Now she is the show stopper of the room and is putting our other fireplaces to shame.

There are still lots of big plans for this room.  Including: hardwood floors (on order and being delivered tomorrow),  board and batten on the walls in creamy white,  new paint on the upper portion of the walls (goodbye body fluid tan), and painted trim (crown molding and window trim).   But even in her current state…this might easily be my favorite room in the house so far.

So that is the rags to riches story of our little fireplace…once an ugly duckling….now a beautiful addition to our music room!