I was looking for something tall to “anchor” my fireplace mantel.
So for my most recent (which seems already like so long ago) weekend DIY project, I spray painted a few branches. First, I let them dry out in the basement for a few days. Considering I saw these black branches at West Elm for $30/piece, this is one easy — and cheap! — decorating project for Fall. In this case, the branches fell onto my property AND I already had shiny black spray paint AND needed to fill this red vase.
Cost: FREE!
This DIY took me all of 20 minutes of my 30-something schedule. In all honesty, it took me longer to “style” the mantel.
Note: I had pictures of this project mid-spray paint, but apparently deleted them in my iPhone update purge (which I STILL haven’t been able to do). *groan* You get the idea. Now, to decorate my mantel FOR REAL for Fall. Need some Pinspiration…
Picture found (lame haha):
Update! Here’s my first step in updating my mantel for Fall (I was feeling motivated last night):
I grabbed my raven bookends, some books with scary themes or covers, and a few Halloween-themed accessories. I also changed around the pictures displayed up there — took down the large black-and-white artwork that my boyfriend and I BOTH hate. Using a few framed and unframed pieces of art that have been left unhung since we painted the interior of the house (another to-do for another day), I added some height and different textures. I still think I need something round up there — maybe a bowl or something?
Did you work on any of your own Weekend DIY projects this past weekend?
When we started talking about vacation to Costa Rica this year, we knew that a contracted project needed to be culled from our 2013 list. There was not a chance that either of us wanted the task of removing all that dirt and damaged wood from the deck project. Painting a three-story hallway was out of the question (especially for this particular blogger who is terrified of ladders). The fireplace was the next “big” project on the list — which included demolition (fun!), drywall and sanding (fuck that dust), tiling and trim… more painting, sealing off the chinney, and the biggie: finding an old mantel and installing to the wall and our uneven floor.
This is what the fireplace area looked like when we were house hunting:
Yes. ORANGE.
After a fresh coat (or two) of paint: The color is Mink from Sherwin Williams
Unfortunately, I was out of town for the demolition. The boyfriend claimed that there were pieces of the old mantel behind the wall, but didn’t want to take the whole thing down just to see it (it wasn’t in any condition to recover anyway).
This is the picture he sent me:
So. much. work. You can kind of see here what we were dealing with: an original firebox that is NOT centered in the wall. And yes, we decided early on to have the fireplace be decorative, not functioning (not in the budget. maybe some day).
Trim taken down and new drywall (oh, so much dust… so. much. dust):
Craigslist find — only $250: Parts!
New tiled hearth (marble tile from The Tile Shop) and more paint!
When all said-and-done, we DID hire a contractor for sealing off the chimney and removing the pipe from the oven. This would also be the first hire that DIDN’T COST A PENNY. In fact, we made money, which happens… never (the contractor bought the old cast iron stove from us). Bizarro world, this project.
Now you see the pipe:
Now you don’t!
AND THERE’S STILL MORE: the inside brick needs to be painted (we’re going with black), and there’s some baseboard that I want removed to “balance” out the wall better. Also, the boyfriend forgot wood caulk to finish up the trim. We can’t do much about our old house being mostly non-square and uneven (basically everywhere), so there are some parts of the mantel that are not perfect. But we are both just SO PLEASED with how it turned out. Not only that, but the addition of a mantel added character back INTO the house — and that’s what renovating an old house is all about.
Kind of a finished living room angle (before the trim was placed. and before the piano messed up my decorating):
Overall, the project cost us around $800 (mantel, tile, materials; we already had the paint. borrowing of neighbor help and supplies, not included). If we had hired a contractor for the entire project, we were estimated around $3,500 (not including the price of the mantel). Who knows what that really would have included at the end of the day; but we also had two different contractors come for estimates and NEVER RETURN OUR CALLS. One of the guys even broke a hole in the wall to give us an estimate and basically dropped off the face of the earth.
Whew. What a project to complete. But… DONE. Also, yes, I’ve totally rearranged the mantel decorations like 832 times!
