I am so excited to share our new fireplace with you today!!
This Christmas my family did a whole handmade Christmas thing for our gift exchange. As a gift my dad offered us free labor for one home improvement project. Sweet! My dad is about as handy as it comes. He can design, build, fix, and renovate just about anything. Anything. So when he gave us this gift my wheels started turning.
AND I knew that they were coming just a few weeks later to watch the kids while we were in Hawaii so it would be perfect timing to fit in a little project.
I settled on our master bedroom fireplace. It was doable in just a few days, I had a design idea, and it would cross something off my "home to-do" list that would probably never make it to the top.
Let me give you a look at the BEFORE
Just blah. Cheap tile. Ugly grout. That brass. (And yes, the carpet and baseboards are on my "home to-do" list as well.)
But seriously, the grout. Let me give you a closer look.
Why would you ever EVER choose that color of grout? Orange, terracotta. Yuck. And if you'll notice on the far left, the previous homeowners painted right over the tiles. Yep! Not exactly sure what the plan was there.
You see that we have vaulted ceilings and the fireplace takes up a big corner of the room. It's what you see when you first walk in the room. It needed some serious help!
I searched around Pinterest a bit and chose THIS as my inspiration photo. I loved the blue glass tile, the trim on the hearth, and the rustic wooden mantle. THIS was another example of what I was going for -- glass tile, crisp white trim.
Because it was a small project I could splurge a bit on nicer tiles. I found these 12x12 mosaic glass tiles at Home Depot for $8.97. They were perfect with just a hint of blue/green and I loved the staggered rectangular shape. Like a mini subway tile.
In the beginning I considered white stacked stone (which is gorgeous), but I'm glad I went with glass tile. Because, look at this!
Isn't it beautiful?! It totally changes the room and pushes the sophistication up a few notches.
Clean whites, spa blue, greys, light natural woods . . . . that has been our master bedroom color scheme for a while now and I just love it. It is so relaxing.
Now that this project is done I am itching to paint the master bedroom! In a perfect world we would have painted the bedroom before this project, but there just wasn't enough time.
That beige on the walls will become a very light, cool grey. And I want to use a dark shade of blue/green (in the same color family as the tiles) on the wall behind our bed. Our bed & bedding are white so it should look really cool. A nice pop in the room.
One of my favorite parts about the fireplace is the white trim on the base. By trimming out the "bench" and filling in the empty space with white paint it makes the entire unit look like a built-in piece. More substantial and intentional. I like it.
I would like to install a mantle like the one in my inspiration photo. But that will be a project for another time.
For the hearth I chose these porcelain tiles from local tile shop (at $2.50 each). It is a perfect base because it doesn't compete with the glass tile
At first we were going to use the glass tiles on the hearth but then I got to thinking about how easily they might scratch or crack if we dropped something there, or threw our keys on the bench or whatever. Makes me cringe just thinking about it. So I'm glad we switched to this.
My dad did such a wonderful job on this project! And can I just tell you how fun it was to come home from Hawaii to find this in our bedroom? What a great gift after a wonderful vacation. So spoiled!
And now I get to enjoy this view from my bed. It is pretty amazing. Thanks dad!
One last look:
