Before & After

We moved into our house at the beginning of last November.  It's hard to believe it has been over a year now!  That really flew by.  Time seems to disappear so fast these days, but that is a whole blog post for another day.

We knew from the minute we moved in that we would paint the fireplace.  So, I gathered inspiration photos and came up with a little design.

This image was my main inspiration:

{Charles de Lisle Design}

 And here is what we were dealing with upon move-in day:

The brick was very dark red and not of good quality.  It really demanded a lot of your attention when in the room.  Everything else is so light and airy, it seemed such a heavy element and we wanted to brighten it up.

So we painted it white and added a new custom mantle:

The change is so dramatic!  The mantle is a large 60yr old plank of poplar from J's family barn.  We were so thrilled to find some great pieces of wood up in the old barn.  J spent a lot of time hand planing it and making sure it fit the space perfectly.  I loved the light, natural color of the wood, so nothing was done to it other than waxing.  I always use Briwax, and this was their clear wax.  For the painting, the brick was first primed with SW Loxon, Sherwin Williams' masonry primer.  And boy, did that brick suck up the primer.  It took two coats of primer.  We then painted two coats of SW Proclassic paint in off-the-shelf white in a satin finish (SW's version of eggshell).  Proclassic is a really nice latex paint that dries to a hard enamel finish, making is extremely durable but easy to work with.  We're very happy with how the fireplace turned out!

Now we need to remove the dark gray blinds from all 11 windows downstairs!  It took me quite a while to figure out what to do with the windows that was budget-friendly since there are so many of them, and I think I've finally made a decision.  I will share when I start working on that!  We will also be adding some low built-in shelving on either side of the fireplace and along that front wall under the window.  There is currently no place to display books or magazines, store blankets, or put plants.  All things I would like to do.  I believe that's the next big project.