Finish Fireplace...Check!

The past couple weeks Dustin and our friend, Ryan, have been working on tiling the fireplace. I've been posting about it throughout the past couple months, here is a recap of the stages:

Bye bye ugly brown tile, we are getting classy and traditional in this casa! Check out our gorgeous new marble tiled fireplace hearth:

Details on the tile and where we found it, check out the "before" post.

We love it and it's a fun new statement in our living room. It also helps lighten up the space. The guys used leveling board to smooth out the surface below, which seemed to work great. We also decided to elevate it a little and add the white trim to give it a clean finish. Now we just need to get busy on the trim work, so we can paint the mantel and I need to find a new fire screen...for some reason they are a pain to find and really expensive! I'll have to start scouring Pinterest again. For now, my cute pearl garland will have to do the distracting.

Hope you all love the tile as much as we do! I can't wait to put it in the powder room. Unfortunately we hit some bumps there because we have to replace a couple pipes (nothing's easy). I'll keep you posted as always! Also, we have that other fun project coming up that I mentioned we hired someone for...all goes well I'll be sharing that soon!

Shout out to Ryan for helping us with this project and teaching my husband how to tile!

Lots of Love,

Smorgasbord of Home Updates

When you have as many projects going on as we do, things get a little crazy around the house. Now, none of them are necessarily BIG projects, but all of these medium projects are causing chaos. We wanted to give you an update and some good laughs on each of our projects, so here we go...

1. The tiny bathroom that is feeling massive. I am going to be painting flowers for the next year if I keep up at this pace. Obviously wanting the painting to look good, I'm having to move rather slowly. A dozen flower bunches can easily take a couple hours and that's usually what I can sneak in here and there. Luckily, I'm loving how it's turning out and it is something I enjoy doing. I just get anxious when I want to get a project done...not allowed with this one! I'm now trying to decide if I just do the upper half or if I want to go with the full "wow" effect by doing the whole thing. Here is where we stand and the sad thing is, Dustin reminded me a mirror is going on this wall...sad realization, but if I ever switch the mirror I'll want the pattern there (is what I keep telling myself).

We also have a lovely new fixture in our dining room:

You know you've lost it when you start referring to a toilet as "cute."

2. The fireplace that is seeping into other areas of the house. I mean that literally. Time for the the funny story: My wonderful husband ripped out the nasty tile that was there before and then had to fill up the holes where the tiles stuck too well. He had it all ready to go for the thin leveling concrete substance. Got that all measured out, stirred and then poured it over the hearth. It looked smooth, filled the space and he was proud. Sitting there he realized one side started to look lower and then lower and then panic set in. He ran downstairs and there was concrete dripping through the ceiling. Now, luckily (for this situation) our basement is unfinished and we just use it for storage. Unluckily, it dripped right on top of his tools stored down there. He was not a happy camper and of course his lovely wife picked that exact moment to call him to "check in"...whoops! It eventually stopped, just caused some clean up. Nothing is easy...

Leveling round two was done with a little anger and is not as smooth...we are told we can smooth out when putting the tile on.

3. The island in uneven territory. The island project is actually the one we are feeling good about because Dustin has been working hard to get the cabinets painted! I think they look awesome and I'm definitely glad we went in the direction of unfinished cabinets. Now we need to find somewhere level to attach the three cabinets together...which might be impossible in our 92 year old home. We have to get them attached on level ground, so we can level out the bottom on our uneven floor by adding a wider base. The good news is that the ceiling fan in there has been making a terrible noise, so I no longer have to convince Dustin to get rid of it. Painting and hearing that awful noise has helped him decide a pretty light is better!

4. The magic carpet that Teddy likes to ride. On a happy note, Teddy is doing much better! He is recovering and back to his peppy self...thank goodness! Sad teddy made me feel so bad.

Like the rug? It's our new office rug! Remember I asked you all for opinions a while back on rugs in this post? Well I ordered the popular choice number one and it was backordered forever. When it came the colors looked different and I didn't like it. I thought the accent color was orange, but it ended up being a weird brown. Love free returns and shipped it back. Found a new addition to the Urban Outfitters rug collection and fell in love! Teddy has been enjoying it as well and it's his new favorite spot to watch me work.

We have another project we are crazily deciding to start hopefully this month, but this one we are hiring out for - yay! I will give you all updates on that one soon.

Hope I didn't wear you out with our crazy projects...I keep telling myself we will get there eventually!

Lots of Love,

Broken Hearth

Remember in the last post where I mentioned our current ridiculous ambition? Well along with the other projects you've been following, we added the fireplace hearth to our list. We love the new marble basketweave tile so much, we decided it should also be displayed where everyone can see, not just the guests lucky enough to use the guest bathroom - which, guests, you better use after all this work! Since Menard's has the tile on sale, we decided to buy enough to do our hearth as well. Here is another picture to jog your memory...

Details on our tile purchase can be found here.

Our hearth currently has very dull, ugly, brown tile that I have hated since we moved in. In case you haven't caught on, I've gotten rid of a lot of brown in this house.

It's even cracked in multiple places. Time to go! Which, my husband apparently took very seriously because he went to town on that tile with a sledge hammer...all gone!

Lucky for me and my blog readers, I snapped some pictures when I was taking the kitchen island pictures. Literally, I came up here to write the island post and I started hearing loud banging noises. He has to be reminded that I need the BEFORE pictures. I seriously should go around the house now and take pictures of everything I want to redo!

We need to pour a little concrete on it to smooth things out and decided we should replace the wood edges (since the hammer might have slipped a couple times...). He is hoping it can be a place to practice tiling a normal, rectangle shape before conquering the bathroom. Like always, I will keep you all posted!

Side note, please keep our cute, little Teddy in your thoughts and prayers. He dislocated his knee and twisted some tendons, so he will have to have knee surgery next week :(

Lots of Love,

Fireplace Tiles

When I was down in Florida a year ago (for the big wedding shindig!), I helped my Aunt Mary come up with a way to spruce up her fireplaces. We decided that to brighten up the room, she should paint her mantel and built-ins white (they were a medium color of wood) and that she needed to replace the tiles on both fireplaces. Pinterest was a great help for finding tile inspirations. When I came back down last spring, she was having the tile installed - I could tell I was going to love it! I was so excited to come back this past month, so I could see the total transformation. It did wonders and I'm in love with the final look...

Formal Living Room Fireplace...

Family Room Fireplace:

Photos via me

I love how she picked similar tile, but the different colors for each room.  The white also made a huge HUGE difference because it made the room brighter and more modern. I tried really hard to find a before picture because she didn't have any...this picture of my cousin and I from seriously 6+ years ago was the best I could do:

Ha, so ignore the people and check out the darker wood in the background - painting it white was such a nice change! The tile on the fireplace in the family room had leaf imprints and the one in the living room had white squares - both look more chic with the subway style tile. I love that seaglass subway tile in her family room and might figure out a way to incorporate it into our house somewhere. It is so chic and classic!

Lots of Love,

Painting the Fireplace!

While Dustin has been painting the walls, I decided to tackle the fireplace in our living room. If your fireplace is brick and already painted, then this project won't take longer than a couple hours. If it is still the original brick, it will take you a little longer because the brick soaks up a lot of paint. I definitely have an appreciation for my cousin, Jenny, who painted a whole brick wall!

Before (I put a line of the new white on there, so you can see how dingy it looked!):

How to paint the fireplace:
1. You need to prep and get your supplies ready. You will need a roller (make sure it's on the thicker side), paint brush, sponge brush, paint tray and paint. I also put a drop cloth on the floor to avoid messes.
2. Roll the fireplace with the roller to get the front of the brick:

3. Start working on filling in the spaces with the paint brush and sponge brush:

3. Repeat steps 2 & 3 until the fireplace looks completely covered. The sponge brush helps get the deeper spots on the bricks. Like I said earlier, if your fireplace is already is already painted this can be a quick update project. If you have raw brick, it is going to take longer and more coats.

After:

Crank up some music or have a good TV show on - I was watching Love It or List It on HGTV and those problems were much worse than painting the fireplace!

We are getting very close on the living room and I am excited to share it with you when we are all done. Today we went to Lowe's for lighting and yesterday I found some fun art at Invio. I cannot wait until it is all done and cleaned up.

Lots of Love,