Family Room Makeover: A New Face for a Funny Fireplace
For our latest True Value blog squad project, we decided to tackle our fireplace. In our 1960s-ish family room addition, the fireplace takes up a lot of visual attention, and its size and placement make it clear the previous owners built it as a focal point. Here’s what we were dealing with:
(Note: this picture is about four years old)
Last year we decided to paint the fireplace white, but it still lacked some appeal.So, it’s not surprising we often chose to ‘hide’ the fireplace by stacking our daughters various toys in front of it:
The list of things we didn’t like about this thing would go on and on. Here are a few photos that are worth a thousand words:
… the horribly-painted post. The sooty chain-mail grate that wouldn’t slide open or closed smoothly…
… what is thing thing? It scares me just looking at it.
Clearly, something needed to be done, and since we NEVER actually burn anything in this fireplace, we decided we could just repurpose it for some simple decor.
I started by removing all the old, sooty stuff:
Once everything was out, Alicia (my wife) vacuumed it out and cleaned it with a brick-cleaning solution we picked up at True Value:
Then, she painted the interior and the metalwork using a high-heat black paint recommended to us by the paint department guy at True Value:
Even though we don’t plan to use the fireplace again ourselves, we figured it’d be a good idea to use a paint that would stand up the to heat, in case someone else decides to after we move on.
Now the fireplace looked a little neater (certainly cleaner), but we needed to put something in it. After surfing around online for inspiration, we decided to make our own decorative logs. We picked up a few packs of ‘holiday birch logs’ at True Value, along with some white paint, and got busy with the sandpaper:
Then we slathered them with white paint:
Then came the fun/frustrating part; our original plan was to do some kind of organic-looking pattern or print on the logs, so we picked up a can of coordinating blue paint and a cool-looking stamp, but the results were, um…
… horrible.
Undeterred, Alicia tried free-handing a design on the ends:
Time-consuming. Still ugly (sorry honey).
Finally, we decided simpler is better, and I just cut all the ends off the logs, leaving a nice, uniform, natural-wood colored face:
Then I just rubbed the exposed ends with wood finishing paste, and stacked the logs up in a fireplace log bin I picked up for $12 on sale:
So, what do you think! Overall, we’re pleased with the effect. I kind of wish we have more logs to fill up the space better (it’s a big hearth, after all), but I’m NOT willing to put in the work to make a dozen more…
Sanding, painting and sawing the logs was no small amount of work (especially with all the false starts), and in retrospect, I don’t know if I’d do it again. Anyone have other (easier) ideas for creating a decorating log display?
bruno
