The front fireplace

I've never smelled a fireplace that's as bad as ours. The flue is closed and yet it still smells from time to time. Not all the time, but sometimes. So I cleaned it, and this helped some.

In addition to kind of smelling like a smoky fireplace, it's also not totally pretty inside:

That doesn't look so bad...

... but if I use the flash: 

While the prettiness of a fireplace is trivial, we don't even use it so it might as well look decent. Right?

So, I got some black Rustoleum heat proof paint (resists up to 1,000F) and painted the inside. Not only should this block in a lot of the smell, but it looks a lot nicer now too:

It found a home

Our 24 drawer card catalog unit is now right by the front door along with the boat prints:

Built in bookshelf is done:

Rachel had boxes of books she's accumulated over the years and has always wanted a "library" of sorts. One of the first big projects (after getting a live-able Master Bedroom) was building this built in bookshelf. Having the books at eye level is really cool and makes us feel that were living in a bookstore or library. 

I made everything without any kinds of plans, just perused some photos online of what we wanted it to look like. I've never built cabinets, cabinet doors or the like prior to this. In the end, it came out costing about $500 in wood, paint and other materials.

Just a reminder of how it all went down: 

And finally:

All. Most. Done.

3 shelves left to paint...

Cheap Art

Rachel and I have been eyeing original art to place above our mantel in the front room on etsy.com and have also looked when we went to Goodwills as well but nothing made us want to open our wallets. Well, we went to the Salvation Army on Saturday and saw this large print that did.

At $9 (originally $15 and then 40% off), we couldn't pass it up. It had some of the colors we were shooting for (blues, oranges, pinks).

The oak frame paired with the blue gave it a late 80s early 90s feel. So I took it apart, spray painted the mat white and painted the frame white by hand. White paint is kind of like magic and we think this thing has a much more modern look.

It really helps the room feel more complete (even if we do have our dining table in the middle straddling the coffee table as we paint).

Room before:

 

Before painting:

Art after painting:

p.s. more on the magic of white paint...


before:

after:

New sconce shades

So we hated these country-esque glass shades on our wall sconces in the front room. Upon further research they aren't the standard 3.5" size but rather 2.25". Searching online provided few solutions.

So just change the sconces altogether? Well, the switch for these lights are at the sconce themself -- there is no wall switch that controls both. And finding newer sconces with switches on the sconce itself is difficult (either expensive or the options are uglier). Also we like how the older brass relates to the antiqued gold mirrors. What to do?

We gave up on it.

Until I spotted a glass shade at OSH this weekend that had the narrower base and in a more modern and simple shade. We were looking to spend $50 a sconce to replace them, but ended up paying $5.68 each for these shades! Score.

Weekly bookcase progress update

Another Sunday night and another update on the progress made to the bookshelf. Basically just did a bunch of priming this weekend. Getting close to applying the final color (semi gloss white).

Built in bookshelf

Finished installing the molding and cutting the shelves this weekend. Next I need to build the cabinet doors and paint!

More built in progress...

Added front facing and molding as well as patched some holes, doors are next.

Today's project...

Built this today:

What is it? Think of it as the first step to something like this:

Front room updated

We went to IKEA over the weekend, and got a couch (You'll see that later) as well as new curtains for multiple rooms and a pair of wicker chairs for the front room.

The front room had this wood valance? above the curtains that just wasnt our style. And we wanted to update the curtains as well, which werent our style.

Before:

Took the wood valance down (it kind of came crashing down and Rachel had to rush to my rescue):

New curtains on new curtain rod, see the valance out on the porch?

They let a lot more light in, plus you can see the matching wicker chairs:

Above the fireplace?

 

Saw this at Bed Bath last night. Hmm...

Front room progress

 

Rachel insisted we buy this gold geometric mirror from Home Goods a week ago, I was less sure at first, but she was right it looks really cool.

Unfortunately, they only had one gold one and one silver one. We bought the gold and thought we'd pick up another gold one at one of their other stores. Well, we tried their Roseville store, no luck. Rachel's dad looked at the Stockton one, nothing. We looked at a few Ross', nothing. Eventually, we gave up, bought the other silver one and I painted it 2 nights ago.

I was thinking that I'd have to paint both to get them to match well enough, but turns out I did a good enough job that I only have to paint the one.

The biggest pain was masking it all off. This took maybe 45-60 minutes. Then I sprayed it with grey primer, then glass black and then the final gold.

I had tested base colors prior and found that by putting the gold over black, the color came out a little golder, a little richer.

The left mirror looks a little crooked, but it's not: the fireplace is! The print above the mantle is too small we'll replace it with something more fitting in the future. Also, we have plans of painting the coffee table and recovering the chairs.