Fun with Fireplaces

This week was a vacation week for us, and I spent my time diligently working on projects around the house instead of going on fun road trips with my sister.

** I painted the vanity in the upstairs hall bathroom. The paint is still curing, so I haven't reinstalled the hardware yet, so no picture.

** I FINALLY finished painting the shelves for the bookshelves in the library. They're now curing also, so again, no pictures. While I was at it, I finished painting some other wood projects also.

** I worked on our living room. This included spackling and sanding the tongue and groove paneling, then priming it and painting it.  I then spackled the walls where the crown moulding used to be- I used an exacto knife to cut the caulk, but still managed to peel the paint when I took down the crown moulding. Then I sanded and primed in preparation for new paint. I also ripped out the fireplace surround and spackled and primed there as well. After that I taped off all the woodwork, and am now ready to paint the walls- no more dull gray!

I don't have pictures yet of the fireplace in it's spackled and primed glory, but here's a before picture. The black slate is ugly and I detest the 1 inch wide mantle- it's completely useless.

And here's a picture with everything ripped out, and the mess not yet cleaned up. I had to take a hammer to the slab in front of the fireplace and break it into 4 or 5 pieces to remove it- it was firmly glued to the plywood that was screwed to the 2x4 frame. Way more work than I anticipated, but at least it's done.

If you look closely, the hole above the fireplace looks a lot different. Turns out that the previous owners built a box that was smaller and less deep than the original TV hole (which is two feet deep). Our neighbors had mentioned that there used to be a TV above the fireplace, but I could never figure out how- the space was too small and there were no plugs. It all made sense once I pulled the trim off. We're still deciding what we're going to do with the gaping hole: drywall over it or create some hidden storage. I'm leaning toward the latter, but haven't yet figured out how to make the hidden storage look good and not be obvious.