Living room / fireplace makeover

Living room before

This was our living room when we purchased the house. It looks fine on first glace but after you start looking you notice the blood red paint, the black and glass shelves, the black curtains, and as Wolf puts it, the mausoleum fireplace with a homemade mantel that wasn't finished on the ends. All of this had to go.

Don't be fooled into thinking Wolf does everything just because he's the one in the pictures. I'm just the photographer so I'm not in them. And when Wolf does take a pic, I usually don't want me in it. lol!

First came the curtains and shelves. Easy enough. 

Then we primed the red wall and painted it a light green. 

Next we tackled the fireplace. Here's where it got dirty.

The mantel came off easy enough, a couple screws and it was off. The tile was another matter. 

It did not want to come off easily and on the right side of the fireplace it actually took the dry wall with it in a lot of areas. We ended up having to cut out a large section around the fireplace and replace the drywall.

Drywall damage

Putting in new drywall

Luckily we had waited to paint this wall until all this was done. Otherwise it would've needed a second coat. ;)

New dry wall done and wall painted

For some reason I hate brass like what's around this fireplace (and all over the house). So we got some high heat spray paint and covered the brass. It also gave us the opportunity to clean the glass, and it needed it!

No more brass. Yea!

Next to the tile were these little pieces of baseboard that were separate than the rest. They weren't lined up well and looked like crap. We decided to take those out and that's how wide we would do the new fireplace. In the following picture you can see the lovely color they had the rest of the room painted prior to putting it on the market! Can you imagine!? 

We looked and looked at stone like products to use and found that things looked great in pictures or far away but once in person and/or close it was not well done. We found a real stone product at Lowe's called Ledgestone that came in a light mix of tans and whites or greys and rust colors. At first we were leaning toward the light mix but we brought 2 pieces of each home and once up against the wall and floor it was clear that the lighter one would just fade into the wall. 

Our color choices for stone (yes, that little  black rectangle on the left is the color the walls were previously!)

The above pic shows the color choices on the wall before painting. We still weren't sure at that point, though we were leaning toward the darker one. But once we painted the walls it was a no-brainer.

Next we took the tip from an installation video and laid out all the stone to make sure there were no patches of color and to make sure we had enough (we didn't). We also went through each box at the store before buying it and made sure there were no pieces that were all one color (there were some that were solid grey, solid red, or even a weird tan) or broken pieces. Out of 10 boxes (60pcs) Little Owl and I first went through we only pulled out 3-4 pieces. When Wolf and I went back to buy more before installation began we had to go through 5-6 boxes to get enough we liked to make 3 boxes. They had put a new pallet out and I wasn't nearly as happy with the selection. Glad I bought when I did!

All laid out

Once we had all the stone laid out and the painting done we put some painters tape on the wall where we wanted to stop the tile to protect the wall/fireplace from the mortar. Everything was now ready for the stone.

Beginning to put up the stone

When Wolf and I were at Lowe's sorting through the boxes for our second batch a couple stopped and asked us if we were doing a fireplace. They said they had just finished theirs and loved it. They gave us a great tip of screwing a board across the top of the fireplace to support that first row there. They didn't do this but wished they had because their stones slid a little. We were very lucky they stopped and told us this because we definitely wouldn't have thought about it until it was too late. 

Here you can see the board still screwed into the wall under the mantel. We made the mistake of putting one row too many on the left side which didn't leave room for the full board so we had to cut the board on that side. In the picture after talking about the mantel below, you can see the support board.

For the mantel we wanted something natural looking. A large chunk of wood basically. We found two options at Home Depot. A 6x6 or 4x6 rough cut cedar. While we both liked the 6x6 we didn't feel it would fit our low ceilings. To us that was for vaulted ceilings or large rooms. So we opted for the 4x6. Wolf originally wanted to leave the wood rough but I had a smoother piece in my mind. I also didn't want to worry about splinters. Since we had 3 extra ft after cutting it down to our size I used that as my tester piece. After even just a quick sanding it looked and felt a lot better. 

Before (top) and After (bottom) sanding.

So I got out my sander and sanded down the whole thing until I could run my hand across it and not get poked or splinters.

Sanding complete

While at the hardware store we looked at stains for our mantel. We didn't want anything dark since the stone is pretty dark and the rest of the wood in the house is golden oak. We picked a Golden Oak and another color a shade darker to try out. On my sanded test piece I put some of each on there. We hated them both. They looked like crap. Wolf said to just leave it natural but I felt it needed something. I thought maybe just oiling it. I checked our cupboards and found a bottle of Murphy's Oil for wood. I tried that on my sample piece and we loved it so I did the mantel with that. 

Front oiled

Sorry I didn't take any pictures of our mounting system. Basically Wolf took a 1x4 and cut it in half lengthwise with a 45deg cut. He put one half on the wall and the other half on the mantel. Then the mantel just hooked onto the one on the wall. It sounds simple but we actually had a hard time getting this to work because our wall is curved. We ended up having to cut a section out of the piece on the wood so it wouldn't hit the curve.

Making progress. Mantel up, support board still in place

 It took us one day of work on the actual fireplace (not counting laying out the stone, buying it, etc), a wet saw rental, 13 boxes of stone, 50lbs of mortar, sander and sandpaper, Murphy's oil, saw, trowel, dry wall, and paint. It was well worth the effort though!

Finished product

New living room