Finished Fireplace!

The stone fabricators came last Friday and installed the four pieces of black Fossil Shell Limestone around our existing firebox!

I love the way it adds some movement and texture to the fireplace.

Here's right after it got installed, but before I gave everything a good scrub. You can see how the installers did a really great job of seaming the four separate pieces.

I love how the fossil shell pattern is more concentrated in the upper right and the lower left corners. It feels balanced and not too crazy.

We installed the tv and mushroom sconces over the weekend and later today I'm going to tackle the dust on the floors (again!). I've also been doing a little decorating, which makes me feel like I can breathe again! We live in a house! With seating! Life is good. :)

I will take some of the after photos today to share with you. The painters came on Saturday and did some touch ups needed on the sided of the fireplace surround, and I also wiped down the firebox and a lot of the soot marks went away. I had planned to paint it black with the special paint for firebrick, but I like the contrast of the lighter gray brick. I think I'll leave it as is for now.

After photos coming right up! Back to cleaning and unpacking!

Living Room Plans

I mentioned yesterday that I was making a few changes in the living room.

Right now, things look like this...

And by Thursday, I somehow want to take this textile/art plan...

...and make it happen.

I'm still deciding on what's going on what.

For now, I'm pretty sure the embossed crocodile leather is going to find itself on my pair of peach chairs...

As you know, these dudes have had a few previous incarnations...they went all girly in the poodle era...

...and are now getting tougher with the leather...

...excited for that to happen.

Apparently, I need 3 of these half cows to make it wurk..

Sorry cows.

The tiger will go on the charcoal sofa in the form of pillows.

The Alky chairs might get pillows and if they do, it will be the KW Faux Bois or Feline- the later works so well in the scheme but I adore the former...wish I had a way to use both!

The burgundy Schumacher velvet is going on on my Platner chair...

...and the blush is just to represent what's already in there pink wise.

As for things that are moving out, the tufted ottoman, chioiserie display case, TV and art wall are all gonzo (don't freak out...the ottoman will find a new home in my dressing room and the cabinet is going in Scarlett's bathroom a la new house- I'm reusing and recycling people:)

Walls are going my new very favourite white, Para Snowfall...it's like BM Cloud White only slightly cooler...wanting to crisp things up in there.

As for art, the Jen Mann piece arrived yesterday, thanks to the Neubacher Shor Contemporary (so nice meeting you Anya and Manny,) and I literally am speechless about it....

...absolutely IN LOVE!

I actually haven't purchased him as of yet- renting it for a few months to see how he works with my other stuff, which is PS, a fabulous thing to do if you're considering investing in an art piece...sort of gives you the chance to see if it really is true love as it were...I'm pretty sure I'll be just as enamoured with 'Sway' dude come rental end...I worked it out perfectly...purchase time should hit right around Christmas;))))

It's going over the credenza, though which credenza is the question.

I have to choose between the long rosewood one that's been there foreves and the new guy I bought for the new house...

I love love the new one but have a soft spot for the old lady as well so we'll see.

In any case, giant art is going there.

The gold mirror that used to be part of the artwall is going over the fireplace and my Jenny original will go where the chinoiserie unit used to be.

So that's the plan.

I've got two days to pull it off before shoots start happening.

Pray for me please.

xo

Painting the Fireplace Black

I'm in New York this week for a really cool project and event that I'm excited to share with you all. Before I left for the airport this weekend I got the itch to paint the fireplace, just to see what it would look like in black, so I rolled on a quick coat.

It will need a couple coats of paint with sanding sessions in between, but so far I'm loving it!

I also found a remnant slab of honed black granite at a local stone yard that I think will be perfect for the fireplace surround. The stone will be cut to fit all the area on the inside of the mantle, surrounding the firebox.

I love the texture of this stone! Isn't it pretty? It's a little bumpy, which I really like for an application like this.

When I get back home I'm going to paint the walls in the living room before finishing the fireplace. I think lightening the walls with a pale gray and a coat of bright white on the beamed ceiling will make for such a pretty contrast in the space with the all-black fireplace. I'm so, so excited to get this space done and functional!

Here are a few of my inspiration images:

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House Beautiful

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Fireplace Mantel Progress

We've had some big wins in the fireplace department lately. Remember how I wanted something more traditional for the mantel, but with cleaner lines? This image from House and Home was my loose inspiration.

Jason worked on framing out the fireplace surround for me while I went to Home Depot to figure out trim to make the new mantel with.

I want a really rounded out molding - something to mimic the curves of the inspiration image's mantel. I felt like I was sort of striking out, until I spotted this hand rail. The rod had been planed so that there was a flat surface on one side - perfect for getting the look of that rounded, tube-looking molding that also sits flat.

I picked up a few other moldings - some crown and chair rail - and also some of this smaller circular trim below, which gives the effect of a rounded beading. We used a small pinner nail gun to hang the molding after cutting it to size with a miter saw.

We built up the outside of the mantel with trim and molding so it would stick out more than the inner-most frame of the mantel.

You can get a better sense of the angles of the mantel frame by looking at the floors here above. It's pretty subtle right now, which I like and I wanted, but I think once the mantel is painted it will look really special. I love it.

I'm working on filling the nail holes today and prepping for the paint job the whole fireplace will be getting soon. And actually the whole room needs to be painted (especially that ceiling) before we hang the sconces and the tv. Also, I still need to go shopping for some dark stone remnants for the firebox surround. We're quite a few steps away from finished here, but I am crazy-excited to have this much accomplished! Project progress is so good for my soul.

More Fireplace Demo and Plans

I mentioned this on Friday, but we had to do a little more demo on the fireplace surround in the living room than we had originally planned to do.

And by a little more, I mean the whole thing came down. Literally every brick and piece of faux stone:

You might remember that I was hoping to have the firebox in here replaced with something a little bigger and that would reach all the way to the ground. I got a couple of bids for a new firebox and ultimately it just felt like a waste of money. So my new plan is to repurpose the existing box with a little paint and find some pretty, dark stone to surround it on all sides. In order to do that, we had to demo just a small row of stone to the right and the left of the firebox (only about six inches on either side). It was clear as soon as we took the jackhammer to the stone that the whole thing was not structurally sound enough to take the strategic demoing, so the whole facade had to come down. It was a big (heavy) mess.

Luckily my family came over and I bribed them with ice cream to help clean up the bricks. They're like me and will do just about anything for a little bit of Blue Bell (have you tried their Peaches and Cream?!).  A few short hours later, we had a clean living room again, less one fire place facade.

Saturday morning, Jason came over to start framing out the new surround.

He used 2x6's to build up the general frame and tomorrow we're going to work on the details - the trim, the paneling, the mantel, the electrical work.

Last night I woke up in the middle of the night, thinking about the fireplace and couldn't go back to sleep (happens more than I'd like to admit, but I don't mind - I'm so glad I still get a kick out of home design after all these years of day in and day out). So I plopped down in front of the fireplace in my pajamas, graph paper pad in hand and drew up some new sketches. The old glass doors were giving me the stink eye the whole time, so I pulled out my mini drill and took them both off.

Ah!!! So much better!! Why had I waited so long?

I was even happier with my middle-of-the-night-handiwork the next morning. Getting rid of those dated doors made a huge difference in the look of the old firebox. I'm planning for the whole fireplace area to be different shades of black and charcoal, so I think I'll paint the brick black and that will help clean up the look even further.

Also, I know some of you were really against the idea of hanging the TV above the fireplace, but we're going for it. It's what works for the room and for us, and I'm actually in a good place with the idea. I think my plan of making the whole fireplace surround shades of black will help to hide the presence of the TV when it's not on.

We're going to have paneling above and to the sides of the TV box, so there will be a lot of dimensional depth to the surround. The firebox will have the stone surround like I mentioned before (basically all that space around the firebox inside that first square of wood). And then we're going to do a chunky cast stone looking mantel which will take up most of the rest of the width of the surround.

I've had this style of mantel in my brain when I imagined the room. Something very simple and modern.

(Both of these images are from Veronica Swanson's home feature in Harper's Bazaar)

But then I stumbled on this photo of a magazine in one of my many google searches and I forgot to save the source info. But I'm really loving the lines here and it might be better to do something a little more on the trad side of modern.

Update: Thank you Jenn for the link to the original source (Canadian House and Home Princess Margaret Showhome). Check out those floors! That's almost exactly what our library floors will look like - it's a sign! :)

Busy weekend! How was yours?