Fireplace Makeover -One Room Challenge Week 4

Today I’m sharing with you my Fireplace Makeover, and all I can say as I enjoy it now is why didn’t I do this sooner?

It’s Week 4 of the One Room Challenge, hosted by Calling It Home where bloggers make over one room of their homes in six weeks.  We’re nearing the end.  If you need to catch up you can check out my previous weeks here:

Week One -Living Room and Eating Area

Week Two -Light, Bright and White

Week Three -Expert Tips on DIY Shiplap from a Contractor

Things are starting to come together, but I have to say at this point I can’t wait for it to be done, and our main floor to get back to normal.  The furniture is here, and the new rug but I’m afraid to put the rug down incase something gets on it before the final reveal pictures in two weeks, haha.  It is all finally coming together.  The fireplace and redoing the harvest table were my last two big messy projects…although now that it’s coming together I think I might add in painting the t.v. unit out white too.  What can I say the more white I add the more I love it.  So onto that newly white fireplace.

You may remember how it looked before.  It matched the hardwood colour and the stairway beside it, so it worked in Maple.  The thing I always hated about it most was that wooden decal on the front.  It bugged me from the beginning and I always intended to remove it.  I even asked someone to help me years ago.  Although it was maybe 5 years ago, so we’d lived in the house 5 years already and the woodworking friend said that the wood around it had faded from the sun, so there would always be a spot showing where it had been.  I knew then we should go ahead and remove it but he convinced me it would look worse.

With the One Room Challenge I knew I had to finally get it off.  I took advantage of my woodworker brother-in-law Shaun working on the shiplap –read all about that here if you missed it, and asked him to remove it for me.  I had visions of trying myself and making it worse by marking up the wood around it.  He popped it off in a matter of seconds.  He used a small putty knife to get underneath it, and pry it off.

It came off all in one piece.  He then carefully pulled out the four finishing nails that had held it in place.

I sanded it down and debated whether to refinish the one panel where it had been removed, or paint the whole fireplace white.  I never minded the wood, and it did match the rest of the wood floors and stairs.  But, all the inspiration pics of Scandinavian living rooms seemed to have white fireplaces, and in the end I decided to go for it.

I thought I was being a good, responsible, non-lazy diy-er by taping out the fireplace before I painted it.  It is the same colour as the walls -JoJo Whitewash by Para, but the walls are eggshell finish and I used the semi-gloss on the fireplace.  I wished I’d never taped it along the walls, because although I thought I’d done it really carefully, it was a little too close, and left a thin strip of wood showing between the white of the shiplap and the new white of the fireplace.  And, as I peeled off the tape, the paint was peeling off too!

What can I say, I’m a learner.  So, I give myself permission to make silly mistakes, and learn from them.  Hopefully you can benefit from my errors if you’re about to do yours, haha.  I used a utility knife to carefully cut the edge of the tape and paint so that it won’t peel off the paint as I removed the tape.  The next morning I used a little artist brush and fixed up my edges.  No big deal -all’s well that ends well.

The other big change is that I painted out the brass.  I swear from the time we moved in I meant to get around to this job and it took ten years.  Do you have any little projects like that at your house?  It looks sooo much better, my first thought when I put the painted grill back on was why didn’t I do this years ago?  Oh well, it’s done now and I love it.

It was super simple to do.  I picked up some matte bbq spray paint -it’s specifically for surfaces that get hot, so perfect for this job.  I removed the brass grills, they just pop off and spray painted them in the garage.   I gave the front and back several light coats, making sure not to go too heavy and cause the paint to run.  When they were all dry I popped them back on -easy peasy.

Just a few inexpensive and quick changes and what a difference it makes!  If you have a builders fireplace and hate the wood decal and brass now you see how quick and easy it is to update it to something a bit more modern and clean lined.  I’m so glad I finally did mine.

So, for the One Room Challenge this week I got the fireplace done, refinished the harvest table (which I’ll be showing you soon), we installed the new light in the eating area, and started some macrame.  I’m still thinking about painting the t.v. unit out white too.  I also have to do one more macrame piece, make some pillows, add the rug in, and then it’s on to all the fun finishing touches, like art, and plants.  It’s starting to come together.  We’ll be hosting my youngest daughter’s birthday party this weekend and I just hope the new white couches survive all the ten year old little girls, haha.

Thanks so much for following along on this redecorating adventure with me, you can see lots more behind the scenes and sneak peeks over on Instagram.  Also, be sure to check out all the other One Room Challenge guest participants progress this week.

With a new white fireplace, life really is a party!